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Into the Wild accents a tension between the value of relationships and freedom. There is little doubt on which side the main character in this movie comes down. Chris McCandless’s apparent creed is that freedom is most supremely manifest in nature. It’s not that he is necessarily opposed to relationships. In fact, he is a social young man with plenty of personal mangnetism. People are drawn to him like bees to honey and he seems to like them. Still, McCandless–played with skillful realism by Emile Hirsch–eagerly seeks fulfillment and joy in the great outdoors, even if it means divorcing himself from meaningful relationships. With focused intensity, McCandless pursues new experiences. He is intrigued by people–as long as they don’t become too familiar and as long as they don’t tie him down. McCandless has seen all he wants to see of the upper middle class lifestyle in which he was raised. He donates his law school nest egg to charity and leaves the values of his family behind, literally. Through the course of this movie, I wondered if he was motivated more by that which he left behind or that which he was seeking. In other words, was he running “from” or running “to”? It’s a difficult question, though he was no doubt a wise and thoughtful young man. On the other hand, how much wisdom should we expect to find in a twenty year-old brain? One of the first pillars of wisdom has something to do with humility; the more one knows, the more he realizes he doesn’t know. Something akin to that line of thinking would have led to different outcomes than that which McCandless ultimately found. After obtaining his undergraduate degree from Emory University, McCandless–who takes on the assumed name of Alexander Supertramp–heads west. Along the way, he encounters an interesting, eclectic range of characters including a grain dealer in South Dakota, (Vince Vaughn with his usual quirky character spin), a hippie couple in Arizona, and a wise old retired military man in California. He engages in these relationships just long enough to see the dawn of meaning and fulfillment. But as soon as something like love rears its head–with cool, dispassionate fury–Chris exits stage left. This movie is produced (in part), written, and superbly directed by Sean Penn. I can and do ignore movies by other Hollywood types who wear their political heart on their sleeve: Tim Robbins, Janeane Garofalo, Alec Baldwin, and Susan Sarandon come immediately to mind. But Sean Penn’s skills as an actor and director are too significant to ignore. While I largely disagree with Penn’s political platform, his latter-day work seems driven by truth and humanity more than an aggressive political agenda. In this film, I felt as if the story was being shared as it really happened, not as if it was being framed to promote some progressive political theme. Into the Wild is based upon a true story which has been adapted for the big screen. Jon Krakauer wrote this best seller which chronicles the young adulthood adventures of the late Christopher Johnson McCandless, who leaves life as he knows it to seek unlimited elbowroom in the wild wilderness of Alaska. And yes, I let a spoiler slip without warning. The thing is, that McCandless dies is a foregone conclusion for anyone that is even half-way engaged in domestic pop culture. And more to the point, the drama in this movie comes not from this young man’s death, but from the way in which he lived his life. Penn uses the editing style in which the near-ending is the first thing we see. Scenes are shuffled like a deck of cards which then circle back around to the beginning. But rather than confusion, this approach brings clarity. The mystery and suspense come not from the stark destination, but in the discovery and magic of the journey. Watching the film, I pondered the question, “Is this twenty year-old man a visionary, an idealistic poet with insight, courage, and intelligence, or a reckless vagabond, foolishly self-indulging his life away?” By the end of the movie, I realized that in my attempt to lasso tidy understanding from my theater seat, I was engaging in the very technique I shun in blockbuster filmmakers. Yes, the film characterizes McCandless as a bit arrogant and–at times–more than a little reckless. Still, it’s hard and maybe unfair to arbitrarily pigeonhole the man. He was a complex person. I appreciated the way in which Mr. Penn refrained from leading me around by a chain, jerking me here and there to force feed some overly simplistic thesis. It’s rare to discover a mainstream release that allows ambiguity and complexity to be what they are. Mr. Penn allowed the story to tell itself with little hint of directorial interference. Rabbit Room readers will appreciate the literate, poetic nature of this effort. The movie brims with quotes from the likes of Henry David Thoreau (“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth”), Leo Tolstoy, and Jack London. My mind wandered a few times as I pondered the aphorisms from McCandless’s journal or dialogue. Passages of McCandless’s personal journal and clips of letters he sent to friends intermittently scroll across the screen. Beauty will also be found in the gorgeous cinematography which captured some of the most beautiful locations in the U.S., Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California, Denali National Park in Alaska, Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, and many more. McCandless and retired military man Ron Franz, played perceptively by Hal Holbrook, share a most compelling and moving relationship. Holbrook’s character wisely indulges Chris McCandless, intuitively realizing that McCandless has built sturdy walls of philosophy what are not likely to be scaled by just anybody. In fact, it’s McCandless that dispenses most of the advice in their dialogue. Like most wise men, Franz mostly listens. Nevertheless, the grizzled old man casually releases what turns out to be one of the most memorable lines in the movie: “When you forgive, you love … and when you love, God’s light shines on you.” Setting aside any dispute as to the explicit theological truth contained in these words, please remember them as you view the final scene of the movie. Like me, odds are that you will find it profoundly moving when you link the final scene to the casually delivered, but penetrating words of the old man. As an aside, the departure scene between Ron Franz and McCandless is one of the best of the entire movie. Failed relationships leave gaping wounds, some more, some less. Its more obvious victims bleed incessantly, are asleep in the back alley, waiting for delivery at the crack house, lounging at the open door mission, or staring blankly at the big screen down at O’Malley’s. Perhaps unintentionally, McCandless offers the closest thing to explaining his unique path when he says, “Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.” Sometimes, the walking wounded bleed in public. For others, it’s a lonely and private experience. When I first learned of Jon Krakauer’s book and the basic story of Christopher McCandless, I thought he must be an idiot. And on some level, maybe he was. Despite his cock-sure, single-minded assurance, McCandless was ill-equipped to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. Simply put, he was unprepared. Many Alaskans familiar with his story have been even more critical. But similar to real life, labels and rash conclusions rarely provide real understanding. I haven’t read the entire book, but the movie does seem to be fair-minded, offering insight without explicit judgment; questions without concrete answers. That this excellent movie evokes a passionately divided response isn’t really surprising; that the passionate response comes from the same viewer is not only surprising, but it is also an indication that it is a serious, nuanced movie that is beholden to nothing but the cause of telling a good story. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Please note that our own Eric Peters wrote and recorded an impressive song about this event. It’s called “Bus 152” (not 142, like in the movie) and it’s one of the awesome tracks on Land of the Living. Miracle of Forgetting and Scarce, other Eric Peters projects, can be purchased in The Rabbit Room. Eric’s song was a natural fit for the soundtrack and may have been in the running, but despite a public relations push, was somehow not chosen.

Eleven-year old Reuben Land, a character in the 2001 book Peace Like a River, provides narration that is clear-eyed and insightful, yet retains the magic, wonder, and innocence of youth. I found it easy to entrust my imagination to the author’s clever method of telling the story through the sensibilities of a pre-teen boy. An author with lesser skill would have either made the boy too smart-alecky for his own good or impossibly cute. As it is written, the character is believable and real. The novel employs the wide open spaces of the Minnesota countryside and rugged terrain of the North Dakota Badlands as a backdrop for its colorful tapestry. Set in the early 1960s, author Leif Enger uses diverse elements including Old Testament and Old West allusions and literary/historical references—often accented by miracles—to tell a tale which highlights eternal truth. As with many stories that contain elements of fantasy, it’s easy to find unmitigated joy in the unexpected mining of tiny truth nuggets hidden in the rubble of the narrative. When I happen upon a vivid and compelling truth—whether or not actually intended by the author—like the power of an atom bomb which belies its size, it detonates waves of pleasure which resonate like massive ripples in a small mountain stream. You will discover many such moments in Peace Like a River. Without succumbing to cartoonish hyperbole or explicit moralizing, Enger uses compelling characters and masterful prose to craft a story which is both familiar and mysterious. Like a well worn path, I found values that were inspirational, comfortable, and warm as my favorite pair of gloves. And yet, despite moments of recognition, I was also intrigued and jarred by so many strange twists and turns. Like a fountain drink of living water, this story refreshed and fulfilled a deep hole, but left me craving more. Of this great novel, it’s equally true to say that I’ve seen it before and I’ve never seen it before. Peace Like a River is a novel which contains deep sadness, pain, and lost innocence. Despite that, I found it dripping with loyalty, peace, faith, joy, and extraordinary love. As the novel ebbs and flows—I was vividly reminded once again that good is better than evil, the truth is better than a lie, and that life is better than death.

Here’s a quick look at the string session. The song they’re working on here is “Hosanna”, and I have to say that I believe that Ben Shive has outdone himself. You should’ve heard these string players going on about how great the arrangements were, all the more amazed because Ben isn’t a string player. Hope you like it. AP —————- Listening to: Randy Travis – Labor of Love via FoxyTunes

A name is more than a convenient handle; it’s an identity. My family names, the lineage of my father and mother, contain both good and evil – remnants of the Fall. For most of my life I’ve identified with those names, and have felt the push and pull of the good and evil of my forebears. In this struggle of life, our name determines and dictates much of our experience. I have relatives who struggle with various forms of addiction and the revolving door of prison; their circumstances are the natural outcome of the identities they are believing in and relying on. But for Christ, we would be doomed to more or less struggle in our various earthly names forever. In Jesus Christ a way has opened for humans to receive a new name; we have been offered a place – and a name – in the Royal Family. Ephesians 3 says that the whole family in heaven and earth is named by the name of the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our new lineage, our pedigree, our genealogy. We have been put in Christ, have died to the old name and the old false identities built on our human ancestors and our mothers and fathers, and now, even now, we are named with this new name, the name of this Father of the Lord. The old names, the names of our earthly lineage, no longer apply. What names are in our lineage? Alcoholic. Loser. Adulterer. Murderer. Abuser. Blasphemer. Suicide. Worrier. Rich Man. Poor Man. Good Man. Bad Man. We can check all these off the list, and in fact throw the list in the trash, because we have a new name: Christ-Man. Christ-Woman. Indwelt son and daughter of God. One Spirit with the Lord. King. Priest. Holy. Beloved. Overcomer. The name Block, with all its attendant history, lineage, pedigree, no longer applies for me. Don’t get me wrong; I love my Dad, my Mom, brothers, sisters. But something fundamental has happened to me in Christ. That old name has been cut off, circumcised in him; the old-man Adamic lineage, with its attendant tag “Sinner,” was cut off. Circumcision is a symbolic act that foreshadowed the future, the Redeemer cutting away from God’s people their old-man identity. Colossians 3 says we “have put off the old man with his deeds,” and “have put on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Colossians 2 says, “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ” Romans 6:4 says we are “buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Baptism is the New Testament equivalent of circumcision, a cutting off of the old life and entering into the new. Let’s get a little graphic here to see what God is getting at. When a person in the Old Testament was circumcised, what did he do with his cut-off foreskin? Did he carry it around in a baggie as a treasured memento of the old life, or keep it in a jar on his shelf? Did the thing try to sew itself back on later? None of the above; it was thrown out on the dunghill. Why? It was dunghill trash because it was dead and no longer part of him. It was nothing but a dead, rotting piece of flesh, no longer part of his identity, in fact no longer related to him in any way. The rite of circumcision meant a complete break with the old life and a wholehearted entrance into the new. Now, if we are circumcised in Christ with the circumcision made without hands, buried with him through baptism into death, what has been cut off? The old identity. The old name. The old lineage, with every bad and good name in the book that was part of our earthly family line, Adam’s race, infected with “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in (get that, in) the children of disobedience.” (disobedience in the Greek is apeithia, literally “the unconvinced”). That false indwelling lord is now cut off in Christ. That old union with him is the very essence of the old man. It is circumcised, cut away from us, and thrown on the dunghill. Good riddance. I’ve heard people say “Well, the old man comes down off the Cross sometimes.” “We’ve got to crucify the old man.” But get this: He’s dead, and we are cut off from all that, here, now, forever. He can’t come down from the Cross, because his life is over. That’s what circumcision in Christ is. The devil schemes constantly to deceive us out of living from our new name and rightful lineage. He works tirelessly to prevent God’s people from accessing our limitless riches in Christ; George MacDonald wrote in Phantastes, “‘Shadow of me…which art not me, but which representest thyself to me as me; here I may find a shadow of light which will devour thee, the shadow of darkness!'” That’s Satan’s game; to masquerade and parade his lying thoughts as our own, getting us to live from that old, dead, cut-off, old man foreskin which doesn’t even exist anymore except as rot in a pile of dung. The old man, that false union of Ephesians 2:2, died with Christ; if Christ died, the old man died. Back when we were the old man, we were put in Christ on the Cross. He “became sin for us” not only by taking the penalty due our sins, but by taking into himself all those thousands and millions of old man identities throughout history. This wasn’t just “paying our sin debt.” In his love he had to separate us from that old name, that old identity of “vessel of wrath, child of the devil, prince-of-the-power-of-the-air-indwelt humanity.” And so we as the old man were put into him; that false union of Ephesians 2:2 that we all had entered into the center of Jesus Christ. It literally burst that pure, beautiful heart to have such muck and filth put inside him after an entire lifetime and a pre-existent eternity as a unity with the pure, beautiful Father. His love-act killed him; when the centurion went back to the Cross, he found Jesus hanging there dead, way ahead of the normal crucifixion death-schedule. When Jesus Christ died, the old “I” in Adam which had been placed in him died. The old man identity of a believer is as dead as a road-kill; we’ve got to fully get that before we can move on and be who we really are. The Mack truck of Justice and Mercy ran the old man clean over. That’s why we’re to put off the deeds of the old man – not because he’s alive and we’re to fight him, but because he’s dead and he is no longer “I”. “When I sin it is no longer I that sins, but sin which dwelleth in me,” says Paul in Romans 7. This is how Paul can say, “For you were once darkness; now you are light in the Lord. Live, then, as children of light.” You were darkness. Old man. Sinner. Enemy of God. Child of the devil. Now you are light in the Lord. New man. Righteous. Friend of God. Child of God. And Paul says, in effect, “Now be that. Live in it. Manifest your real identity.” That’s also his argument in 1Cor 6 and many other places: “Don’t you know your body is the temple of the Lord? He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Are you going to take your body and join it with a prostitute? Flee fornication.” The Pauline pattern is always identity, then behavior, because reliance upon our real identity, trusting in Christ himself at the root of our being, produces the righteous life that God desires. “You were once darkness (old man identity); now you are light in the Lord (new man identity). Live, then, as children of light (be who you really are).” Read Paul’s letters and you’ll see that he rarely talks about behavior before extensive reiteration of our new identity. He does this especially in Ephesians and Colossians; if you read them with this in mind you’ll see the distinction: Eph 1-3: Identity – Eph 4-6: Behavior. Col 1-2: Identity – Col 3-4 Behavior. We have a new name, the name of our indwelling God. A totally new identity and lineage, with absolute power to overcome all the unbelief the devil has built up in our psyches, all the ruts of false self-coping mechanisms built in a lifetime of human interaction. And now, the only thing left for us is to be transformed in our actions on a daily basis. How? It all happens by renewing our minds to the real truth, in a Christ-directed life which uses the devil as resistance training. We’ve got to internally recognize and rely upon the eternal truth of our circumcision, the cutting-off of the old man which Jesus did once for all time. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.” Period. And now the prince of the power of the air is no longer part of our identity; he is merely part of our training; his opposition makes our faith-choice possible. What’s in a name? Well, in the new name, our true name, power. Completeness. Holiness. Life-change. Purpose. Meaning. Everything we’ve been looking for. In the old name? Sin. The hamster wheel of self-effort: try-sin-repent-try-sin-repent, ad nauseum (believe me, it’ll go on forever until we jump off in faith). Striving, lacking, incompleteness, unholiness. Frustration. “I keep doing what I don’t want to do! I’m not doing the good things I want to do!” Life under the Law and so under the Curse. That’s what Paul describes in Romans 7. But we’re not meant to stay in Romans 7; we’re meant to move on and live in 8 and even 9, where we willingly give our lives – and if it were possible even our salvation – for others. As believers, we choose daily. The Christian life is not a pie-in-the-sky concept; it is a here-and-now commitment to taking God at his written Word, and through faith watching the Living Word flow through us in our experience. It’s our choice: Am I defined by my heavenly Father? Or does my earthly Adam-lineage determine my identity? Our actions will flow spontaneously as a result of the inner choice.

“He’s so…asymmetrical.” This was how a friend of mine once described his introduction to Lyle Lovett. My first introduction to Lyle was through the tabloids wondering how he managed to marry Julia Roberts. Then one day rummaging through the old Davis Kidd Bookstore in Green Hills, Tennessee, I found The Road to Ensenada in one of the listening stations. So I listened. I had no idea, honestly, what to expect. Half a song in, I grabbed a copy and bought it, thinking I was getting my hands on something witty. And I was, but as I listened, and then got more of his work, I realized not only that he was witty, he was also brooding, and whimsical, and serious…and very strange to look at. And the quality of his work is top shelf. I’ve described him as being to country music what Sting is to pop music–in there when he wants to be, but obviously capable of way more depth and substance than what you typically find on the radio. It hard to review just one Lyle Lovett record because they all seem to have a personality of their own, and Lyle achieves something very difficult–he can own whatever he records, whether he wrote it or not. One minute he’s folk, another straight up country. Then he’s gospel, then big band. Then American classic, then Latin. But he owns it all in such a convincing way that you never feel like he’s losing himself in this variety. It’s like some combination of all these IS his style. Asymmetrical. So since I want to limit this to just one disc, I’m going with the one that introduced me to Lyle, and served as, I think, the best preparation for whatever else you get your hands on by him. Oh, and one more thing. Lyle put a hidden track on this disc before hidden tracks were cool. And its not a throwaway song either. Free stuff!

I was further bombarded with “hello Miss Coates!”-es from all sides as I made the trek to my subterranean art cavern, and then again as I carried my cowboy mug to the teachers’ lounge. Even the middle-schoolers muttered some “HeyMissCoates”-es from beneath their shrouds of long hair that are forever hiding their bleary eyes. (Why does it feel as though pigs are flying somewhere when an adolescent boy speaks kindly to me?) As I swirled cream into my coffee, it occurred to me how these mutual recognitions and little greetings-in-passing had made my day’s beginning so very much more bearable, and that they were little gifts from God. “I like you hair, Miss Coates. It’s really pretty,” he said with a sheepish grin over my shoulder as I finished my sweet potato at the lunch table. “Your earrings are so sparkly!” he offered with an equally sparkly smile as he entered the classroom. As we settled into learning mode, I explained and demonstrated how thorough coloring would make the robot’s feet look sooo much more lively, I heard, “I just love you, Miss Coates,” and he patted my [lower] back sympathetically in a manner similar to that of a concerned aunt. His classmates erupted into laughter and those rollercoaster-y “oooooohhhh”s that I dislike so intensely. His face flushed berry red and his head lowered a bit. As soon as the taunting died down I said, “Cooper, I just love you, too.” “But you’re too old for him!” they cried, and we all laughed. I took a break from coloring my robot and launched into a mini-sermon on how important it is for us to love each other well, and that it’s one of the big reasons we were even put on this earth. These unsuspecting third graders’ faces were displaying blank stares for the most part, but I could recognize the light of understanding in a precious few pairs of wide eyes. Van Gogh strung the words together in the loveliest way: “I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” A friend of mine has posed this question to me a few times: “What do you want your legacy to be?” After thinking about it for a couple of years, my answer has formed into this: I want to be remembered for loving people well through offerings of my creative gifts. They are what God gave to me and I offer them, in turn, so gladly. I hope that when I am remembered, it is for the meals I make, the flowers I arrange, the home atmospheres I create, the music I share, the letters I write, and the art I offer. (And maybe for my curly hair…and my staggering sense of humor…then there’s my obvious knack for comedic timing….oh, and my spelling ability….ummmm, that’s it for now.) There are so many intricate, winding pathways that lead to loving artfully, and we all go about the business of love from different angles — we show it (and receive it) in various ways, but the emotion ultimately makes its way to the heart of the recipient, despite our bumbling and tripping ways. We hold its beautiful, quiet, but overwhelming power so timidly in our hands and extend it to one another. This is where the art happens. Being an artist of any kind requires equally heavy doses of vulnerability and bravery, as does this hugely complex and deep matter of love. The creative process is much like a relationship in that it is a journey, most times a long, laborious one. The idea or dream of something new grows and develops, then slowly turns into reality as we come to know and understand our subject matter, or our friend or lover. How good of our God to give us unending supplies and time enough, in both the worlds of art and love, to explore the possibilities.

I just finished a book that upon closing it, I felt like it finished me in a sense. A quiet meditative book that reached down and stirred the deep waters in me. It’s Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner Gilead, given to me by my friend Andrew Peterson. I was first of all amazed that a woman could author a book with such a convincing male voice! There’s never a moment that John Ames voice rings untrue. It’s also remarkable Marilynne Robinson captured the subtlest nuances of the father/son story. Furthermore, I’m not sure what her spirituality is, but she wrote convincingly of a very authentic and deeply rooted faith. I’m hard pressed to think of a more profoundly Christian book than Gilead, but in ways least expected. Mark Twain talks of a “religious man in the worst sense of the word”, and I would call this a religious book in the best sense of the word. I knew I wanted to write about this book here in the rabbit room, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of what to write and I was afraid I’d fail the book. It’s difficult to pull little quotes from it that are brilliant, because any brilliant quote would end up being three pages long. Entire passages are stunningly beautiful, but all in a quiet and unassuming way. It took me a long time to read the book because I had to savor every page – there was no filler. It’s one of the books that I feel changed me in the reading of it, or at the very least made me more present to my own life. That’s probably the best that I could say about it. Andrew and I were talking about the book a few weeks ago after I had finished it, and I talked about one of my favorite scenes where John Ames has a dream that his grandfather “stalked out of the trees in that furious way he had, scooped his hat full of water, and threw it, so a sheet of water came sailing toward us, billowing in the air like a veil, and fell down over us. Then he put his hat back on his head and stalked off into the trees again and left us standing there in that glistening river, amazed at ourselves and shining like the apostles. I mention this because it seems to me transformations just that abrupt do occur in this life, and they occur unsought and unawaited, and they beggar your hopes and your deserving….” That’s the way I feel this book came to me, like an unexpected, unsought, transformational gift.

Next to my name on the front page of the Rabbit Room it claims that I’m a boatwright. That’s a bit of a stretch in my mind; building boats is something I’ve done little enough of and something I do only as a small part of my larger job as an Arts and Crafts Instructor for teenagers. But it’s something I love, and something I really believe has worth beyond its obvious end product. I’ve completed two cedar canoes in the last two years and as my bio points out, I’m in the process of building a small sailboat. Each time I’ve delivered one of these boats out of my shop and loosed it into the world people congratulate me and tell me I’ve crafted a true work of art. That accusation, that a boat is a work of art, is one I struggle with. Part of my definition of art is that it has to convey meaning, however tenuously, and I don’t know how people can see meaning in my boats. But I have come to the conclusion that they are works of art after all, even if I don’t consider them ‘art’ when approached objectively. How’s that? Well, the best way I can answer that is to tell you how a boat is made. I begin with a form. A simple skeletal shape, upturned on a bench, and looking like a canoe to no one but me. Each piece of this temporary structure is painstakingly positioned, aligned left and right, up and down, plumb, fair, and true. If the underlying shape is not true, the final vessel will reflect those flaws. Then I go to the lumberyard. They hate me there. I pick through all their cedar boards, inspecting each one for knots, grain orientation, and color and set a precious perfect few aside. I buy the few I find and ask when the next shipment might be in so that I can inconvenience them once again. Back in the shop, I take these few chosen boards and break them down, cutting them into thin, brittle strips and then running each strip through a router jig to get them ready for their purpose. During this cutting and shaping, many break and find their way into the scrap pile, those that complete the process are sorted by color and laid aside to await their purpose. When enough strips are cut, they are one at a time bent to the form and glued together. Slowly, over a matter of days and weeks, the shape of a canoe begins to materialize from so many disparate parts. When the hull is complete, each piece has been planed, cut, and fitted by hand to serve the exact purpose for which it was designed. No strip is interchangeable with another, they are each unique and each supported by the one above and below it, each a small part of a greater form. Then with the entire form visible, it is easy to think the work nearly done. This is a deception. The hull is roughly shaped and must be faired. Every errant corner and imperfection must be planed and sanded away. There is no shortcut. This is when you come to know the thing you are building. You close your eyes and work by the feel of it beneath your hands. You run your fingers around its curves and flanks and cut away everything that doesn’t belong. You lay your cheek against it and smell her cedar perfume as you follow her sweeping lines from bow to stern. It is a singular and exalting experience to fair the hull of a wooden canoe. With the hull at last faired and perfected you sheath her in fiberglass to give strength. When you think the work is nearly done, you remove the hull from the form and she stands on her own, maintaining the shape you gave her, but you find that while she’s fair on the outside, she’s rough and empty on the interior. So you start again, feeling, cutting, sanding, making her fine and once again when you’ve done all you can do, you sheath her in glass to give strength. Then she’s solid, she’s seaworthy, she’ll float. But she’s not finished. She needs gunwales and decks, seats, and a thwart to keep her sound, steady, and comfortable. So your work goes on and little by little you watch her become what you saw in your mind so long ago when others looked at the form you made and scratched their heads. And in the end, your hands have bled for her, the sweat of your brow has dropped onto her and become part of her, you’ve held her and caressed her and been silent together a long time, and at last she’s beautiful. Time to give her away. You deliver her to strangers that haven’t known her, and they call it ‘Art’. But they don’t know what she means. I know. The boys that helped me build her know. She’s an art of work. The art is the blood and sweat. The silence. The ache in the bones, and finally the knowing that whomever she carries, she will bear them safe across dark waters.

I haven’t figured out a way to link my other blog (andrew-peterson.blogspot.com) to this one, so I’ll just include the video here. To read more about good ol’ Stuart Duncan, read here.

Most of us began by desire; at some point we desired a guitar or banjo, or wanted to write stories or essays or songs, or we longed to paint. My son loves to draw; his desire is a full-blown passion. I don’t have to tell him to draw – the desire is his compulsion. His early desire is a good indicator of a gift in that area. And as creative artists on this site, our various desires and careers show our God-created gifts. A gift from God. Desire. Faith. These fueled me from my early teens until the age of 30. I had a gift. I loved doing the thing. And I believed I could continue in doing it for the rest of my life. But unbelieving adults in my family implanted doubts, sowed tares among the wheat. “How will you ever own a home, or raise a family? You need something to fall back on!” Their motive was love, but fueled by fear of failure. My reply back then was Matthew 6. I can trust God to take care of my needs; all I need to do is seek him first, and all these (food, shelter, clothing, etc) shall be given – handed – to me. Though they hammered on that, I never questioned it. But in the heart of me there was doubt about my ability – especially my voice. And so perfectionism was born in me. The gift was there; desire was there. But faith in the gift became infected by doubt. At 27 I joined a high level band and have been in it for 16 years. At first it was a high. The validation. The thrill. But then the perfectionism kicked in. It’s not good enough. Do it again. Over and over. So I crashed; those undermining doubts dug a crater under my faith in the gift, and the whole thing collapsed. My self-worth, subconsciously connected to my ability as a musician rather than to Christ, crashed along with it all. In that crash I found Christ at the center of my being, and through the Word he began to reprogram my thinking about myself. I found that I am not my gift. I’m a reigning overcomer, because the Overcomer lives in me. The Father and Son have made their home in me by the Spirit. I’m one spirit with the Lord, an indivisible union that is eternal. And that’s the source of my worth. Christ living in me, through me – as if it were me living. That’s the real Me. To the extent that I trust him to do so, he lives through me, because righteousness is by grace through faith. I found all that in the mid-nineties. I found my total weakness, and through that I found true strength as I began to recognize Christ as the Root and Ground of my being. But the lack of faith in my gifting continued. I rested for years in my role in the band, and subconsciously stayed within that comfort zone, rarely venturing out into faith-territory. I didn’t want to meet any giants or fierce inhabitants, even though there was milk, honey, and wine to be had, because I had chosen to not have faith in the Giver of my gift, the Promiser of the promises. Recently God has begun to bring me back to faith in himself as the Giver of my gift. I’m realizing that he has put this musical gift in me for others; it’s not there for me to get self-worth from and turn into an idol. It’s there for others to experience the richness of a life indwelt by Christ. It’s there for a platform for me to speak Christ to others. It’s there to move and inspire and stir those who hear it into a deeper relationship with God, whether I’m playing gospel or secular music. I’ve learned that humility doesn’t mean to downgrade the gift and be perfectionistic. It means to accept our gift, trust in the Giver, and live from desire. That in itself will bring the gift to a greater and more perfect expression. So I’m getting back to the beginning. Life as a child. A gift. Desire to use it, loving the doing of it. And a faith that doesn’t shrink back in fear at digging deep, at being honest and transparent, at speaking the truth in love through songs. To have this kind of faith in the gift is to have faith in the Giver, to have purpose, meaning, passion, not rooted in the gift, but in the Giver who lives inside the gifted one…inside the artist. I played my first show last night. That sounds weird, because I’ve been playing in bands since I was 16 and am now 43. But this was the first show that I led. It was up in Kentucky, with three talented musicians, and we all sang songs and played instrumentals; I didn’t want it to be the Welcome-To-Me Show. We played a lot of bluegrass, and about half of the show was gospel songs that I’ve written. Near the end I realized how much I was enjoying it. I didn’t sing the best I’ve ever sung, or play the best I’ve ever played, but it wasn’t the worst, and there were some really good moments. There’s room for improvement, but that will come as I continually let go of all those false concepts that have shaped me into staying in my comfort zone in my regular gig as I learn to trust in the Giver rather than comparing my gift with the gifts of others. We can let the world define us. We can choose to compare ourselves to others and feel defeated or elated because we’re not-as-good-as or better-than. We can give up in defeat and become complacent, or resentful and bitter. We can strive to climb to the top of the heap and stand there like Hercules, flexing our greater-than-other-men muscles. But what I’ve found is best is to just trust the Giver of the gift, and live from desire. The Devil hates that. But that’s Christ expressing himself through our art. That is what it means to be an Christ-ian artist, whether we are writing songs about human disappointments, loves, hopes, experiences, or writing explicitly about Christ. God expressed himself through Jesus in Gethsemane and the Crucifixion as well as in the Resurrection and Ascension. Darkness, weakness, fear, and death. Power and new life, resurrection and a stepping up to our true destiny. It’s all part of our art, because true art springs from God’s mind and is pushed through into this temporary realm by his chosen agents – his Christ-indwelt people (I don’t want to get off on a sidetrack of how God expresses himself even through the art of those who hate him – but he does). C.S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, “Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower – become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.” “I don’t think I’m much troubled in that way,” said the Ghost stiffly. “That’s excellent,” said the Spirit. “Not many of us had quite got over it when we first arrived. But if there is any of that inflammation left it will be cured when you come to the fountain.” ”What fountain’s that?” “It is up there in the mountains,” said the Spirit. “Very cold and clear, between two green hills…When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else’s: without pride and without modesty.” I’m once again living by faith in my Father’s Idea of me as Musician; that’s an idea that I cast off long ago as “Not my true identity.” But it is a part of my real identity in Christ; not the Center, but part of the means of expression. Faith is not arrogance. Humility is not “I’m no good.” I’m to punch pride and false modesty in the face every time the devilishly-inspired thoughts come into my brain. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s the height of arrogance to refuse to trust the Giver of gifts, desire, and faith; it is the death of Christ-expression to downgrade our gifts and our humanity. And humility is the simple recognition that it all comes from the Father. Gift + Desire + Faith = Art. That’s what I watch my son doing; he knows his gifting, lives from desire, trusts me, and so trusts himself. In the creative act, that’s what it means to become a child.

Do you have any CD’s in your collection that will be forever associated with some event or season of life—like the soundtrack to your last high school summer or what you listened to over and over again on that one road trip to wherever it was? As a musician, Andrew Osenga is a unique voice in that he can deliver a folk-tune with all the earnestness of an old-school troubadour, and then turn the volume up to eleven with unadulterated, straight-ahead rock and roll. Not only is he capable at both. He’s good. For his musicianship alone, you can’t go wrong with any of his releases. And vocally he has a great gift of knowing where he is in a song a delivering his lines just right within their context. But Andy is also a courageous songwriter. He doesn’t spoon-feed us the context for his songs. You don’t always know if he’s being introspective, autobiographical or just spinning a good yarn. But you always have the sense he is up to something with each song. Photographs speaks in many voices. The mark of Osenga’s skill is how seamlessly he tells these tales without flinching, and without feeling the need to tell us how everything worked out okay in the end. His songs are slices of life, little snippets of unfolding stories, told with simplicity and great importance. Yet, before and after these photographs are much larger unfolding stories in the process of being told. “High School Band” is a great example of this. It’s the same weekend in September every year, and sitting in their lawn chairs on that hill, the people who have gathered to watch the Homecoming parade calibrate the passage of time and the plodding on of life. They are ordinary by appearance, but complex when the curtain gets pulled back a bit. Aren’t we all? No one has a simple story. Osenga has a way of saying things that causes me to check to make sure I heard him right. And some of these lines, when I realized I had heard them right, left me more moved than I expected to be, like when one of his characters describes growing up without a dad: “A boy without his father has mighty shoes to fill. He becomes a husband to his mother and a daddy to himself.” The theme that emerges throughout is this: We become who we are. Your life, my life… they are the perfect result of the lives we’ve lived up to this point. And our lives have become what they are at least in part due to the generations before us who either gave or withheld what we needed and either improved or ruined those things before handing them down. And we’re in the process of doing the same. When I hear the opening swell of the first track, my mind pulls out a photograph of me walking home in the winter. And I remember Osenga’s record, but I also remember how that was a season of growth and change in my life—how I was in the process of becoming who I am. And how I still am. And how its constant… “So take a photograph, cause this ain’t gonna last…”

Returning from a convention on the West coast, my Continental Airlines flight began to circle Denver. Upon landing, my business partner and I would switch planes for the lastleg of our trip home to Omaha. A regular flyer, my inerds still stirred a bit with each sway of the aircraft. Near blizzard conditions prevailed and the inexplicable holding pattern added a squirt of fuel to the fire of my concern. After the second or third trip around the mile-high city, the pilot made an announcement: “Due to backed up runway traffic at Stapleton Airport and inclement weather forcing runway closures, we will continue to circle the city until a runway can be cleared for landing.” After circling the city for what seemed like another dozen times, the speakers crackled with another static laced announcement from the pilot. Without emotion, he explained that our aircraft would be diverted to Colorado Springs, a short twenty minutes by air. Deteriorating winter weather in Denver meant the grip of the holding pattern became tighter, like a persistent, but slow moving vise. With nearly four hours of travel time already logged and a delay at hand, I noticed the rarely seen look of annoyance on my business partner’s face. Removing my glasses and rubbing my eyes, I couldn’t deny that I felt the same way. It had been a long week. I just wanted to view the snow from my own window, inside my own house, with my own family. After an eye-of-the-storm white-knuckle landing in Colorado Springs, we learned we would be required to sit on the tarmac until a decision was made on our final destination. As nervous passengers, we had many questions and no answers. I was happy to be safely on the ground, but still simmering in self-pity and mild anger when the familiar CBS jingle signaled the start of the five o’clock news, visible on a nearby T.V. monitor. As the flight attendants passed out complimentary drinks and snacks, Dan Rather opened the newscast with these words: “This just in, from Denver, Colorado–Continental Airlines DC-9, Flight 1713, has crashed on take-off in a snowstorm; 28 people are reported dead and 82 have been injured …” The half-joking demeanor of my fellow passengers–the byproduct of nerves and vodka–grew eerily quiet. The reason our flight maintained an extended “holding pattern” suddenly became crystal clear; literally too close for comfort. I was stunned. As the snow continued to pelt my small window, my attitude transitioned from arrogance and anger to graciousness and gratitude. I was concurrently sad for the passengers and their families who had lost their lives or sustained injuries and thankful and humbled that my partner and I were–for the moment–safe and on the ground. Many years have passed since that sad day in November of 1987. And guess what? I still face holding patterns. A traffic jam, a financial or personal dilemma, a career conundrum, or simply standing in line at the wrong supermarket check-out line–these things still present personal challenges. And though I’d like to say that I left my overgrown impatience and arrogance on that tarmac in Colorado Springs, I must reluctantly admit, I still carry them around in my pocket. How else to explain that they are so close at hand when I call them? Nevertheless, on my best days I have a vivid recollection of a Colorado winter’s day. I reflect on the lesson borrowed from Continental Airlines flight 1713. A holding pattern need not be a bad thing. It’s often necessary for safety and provides an opportunity to recharge, refuel, and rejuvenate. Not to mention, just when I have the belief that my life circumstance could not get any worse, I need not divert my view very far to find a neighbor in need of support–maybe suffering though pain that dwarfs my own. Oh … and this: Often, the reason for the holding pattern isn’t clear until I casually glance into the rear view mirror and see the flashing lights.

Today, in the middle of a conversation, I realized that the man I was speaking to was insane. This gentleman, whom I have known for quite some time, without warning began to tell me of his vast collection of the works of an obscure writer and insisted on detailing this writer’s entire career to me right down to how different manuscripts of various books differed from each other by even the slightest word. As if he were passing a scandalous stock tip he leaned in and whispered to me that he’d recently bought a rare edition worth over $100 for merely $90. He seemed somewhat crestfallen at my narrow-eyed, slow-nod, ‘alrighty-then’ reaction. This bizarre turn of the conversation into something I considered utterly snooze-worthy led me to the discovery of his insanity. Clearly a crazy man. So aren’t we all defined by our various insanities? Yes, of course we are. Here’s a short list of some of the many ways in which I am certifiably insane. 1. The aforementioned comic book disorder. Happily, I only have a couple hundred and therefore have not yet been relegated to the realm of the true nerd. Distressingly though, this number is growing at an alarming rate. 2. My Strawberry Nesquik (which I must have every morning) must be made only of the powdered mix, never the syrup, and must consist of three heaping teaspoons of mix in a large tumbler type cup. (The use of the word ‘heaping’ here carries the very scientific and culinary meaning of “really freakin’ huge”) 3. Butterflies may touch me. Grasshoppers may not. 4. I play this really geeky game with the kids at work called Heroclix. I can best describe it as chess with Superheroes. Sometimes I refer to my superheroic army as “all zee little pepples” and line them up so I can pretend like they are my henchmen. 5. Movies make me cry. I wish this only applied to movies like The Way We Were and Steel Magnolias but I’m afraid I cry a little for pure joy when Yoda pulls out his lightsaber and I cry a lot when Sam tells Frodo he’ll carry him. I’d talk about Pride and Prejudice but I’m afraid I’ll start crying right now. 6. Food on the plate is not allowed to touch other food except on rare occasions where it is unavoidable–like Thankgiving. Even then, the cranberry sauce must be kept a close watch upon. 7. I hate hot weather, love snow, and live in Florida. 8. I voted for Ross Perot. 9. I secretly love Meatloaf songs, and wish Andrew Peterson would write more in the style of Jim Steinman. 10. When I go out to eat Mexican, I spend the entire drive (35 minutes for me) agonizing over whether I should order cheese dip, guacamole dip, or possibly both. Lately, guacamole is winning the battle for my soul. So those are a few of mine (trust me there are more, so many more). What are yours?

“Jesus thrown everything off balance.” So says Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit in her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” It’s as true as the globe tilts and spins on its axis. To understand why, you need to hear, really hear, the Christmas story. It’s an important story to tell. And it needs to be told well because it is at the same time simple and intricate, endearing and profound, joyful and sober. Behold The Lamb of God, by Andrew Peterson and his friends, is a Christmas record that tells the story well. You will not find renditions of Christmas classics here. What you’ll get instead is the telling of a story that takes an epic sweep across the whole of redemptive history. Reaching all the way back to Genesis, Behold the Lamb of God takes us through the unfolding of God’s plan to reconcile His people to Himself. The arch of the story is of a grand magnitude. But what makes this album so effective is that it also faithfully and elegantly captures snapshots of the events that transpired that night in Bethlehem. Christmas is a time for celebration. But it’s the kind of celebration that is part exultation, part gasp. We should be as blissfully drunk on the intoxicating good fortune that’s come our way as we should be speechless at the “grotesque” reality that the incarnation occurred so that the body of this tiny babe might be offered up for you and for me. Andrew contends this is as much an Easter meditation as it is a Christmas one—which makes it all that much more a truly excellent Christmas record. Some Highlights: Track 2, “Passover Us:” Only Andrew Peterson can deliver a line like “Denial ain’t just a river, you know,” without making us roll our eyes. That line comes in “Passover Us.” This song is a gasp—the people of God, enslaved to Pharaoh, praying as they apply the blood of the lamb to the doorposts of their homes, “Lord, let your judgment pass over us. Lord, let your love hover near. Don’t let your sweet mercy pass over us. Let this blood cover over us here.” Already Behold the Lamb is presenting Jesus as the “long awaited Messiah.” There’s an urgency to this song… a desperation that cries out for a more permanent and more perfect sacrifice. Track 3, “So Long, Moses,” is to me what “The Color Green “was on Rich Mullin’s Liturgy, Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band. That is about as high a compliment as I can offer— what I consider the best song on the best recording by a great artist. And I say that as a fan of Andrew’s entire catalog. I link these songs because until I heard “The Color Green” I regarded Rich as a great songwriter, but that song let us all know he was more than that. He could actually draw us deep into this world where “the streams are all swollen with winter, winter unfrozen and free to run away now…” I couldn’t listen passively to that song. I had to enter in and feel its weight. (I realize I may be making such a subjective reference here that only I can appreciate it. But if Ron Block is right, there are enough absolutes to the craft of songwriting that maybe Rich Mullins fans will know what I mean.) Anyway, “So Long, Moses” tells of the people of God eagerly waiting their King to come, imagining what He’ll be like. They were looking for a King like David, and David was such a hero in their minds that they figured they’d be able to tell the Messiah by the fact that he would be more “David” than David was. But when the Messiah comes, Isaiah says, “He will bear no beauty or glory. Rejected, despised, a man of such sorrows we’ll cover our eyes. He’ll take up our sickness and carry our tears. For His people He will be pierced. He’ll be crushed for our evils, our punishment feel. By His wounds we will be healed. From you, O Bethlehem, small among Judah, a ruler will come, ancient and strong.” I don’t know how Andrew came up with this song, but its bigger than him. That much I do know. Track 6, “Matthew’s Begats,” is an unbelievable achievement. It is Matthew’s Genealogy put to song. I once preached on this text, and rather than reading it, we played this song over the house system. I would not have done that if the song skipped generations or played around with the text too much. It doesn’t. And Ron Block’s banjo makes all the difference. You just have to hear it to appreciate it. And the genealogy is so important to the story, too. It reminds us that these events took place in real time and space. Track 8, “Labor of Love,” is a powerful portrait of Jesus’ birth; of Mary and Joseph on the cold, hard stone and straw. Jill Phillips takes us there so beautifully. Man, she’s got a gift. There I was driving down the highway minding my own business, and then this song came along and all the sudden I had tears to deal with. Thank you Jill. Track 11, “Behold the Lamb of God “ (and the reprise that ties in at the end) is worshipful, rich, and beautifully layered. As the song builds, it plays like a montage of everything that’s played before it, capturing in bits and pieces these images Andrew and friends have presented along the way. There are no throw away songs on this record. It holds together, faithful to its objective to tell the “True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ.” This disc is a great gift to give, and an excellent way to prepare yourself and your family for Christmas. May your celebration of Christmas be marked by your worship of Jesus. And if you could use assistance pursuing that end, this record is a very helpful guide. Here’s the track listing and the featured vocalists: 1. Gather ‘Round, Ye Children, Come (Andrew Peterson) 2. Passover Us (AP) 3. So Long, Moses (AP) 4. Deliver Us (Derek Webb) 5. O Come, O Come Emmanuel (Instrumental) 6. Matthew’s Begats (AP) 7. It Came to Pass (AP) 8. Labor of Love (Jill Phillips) 9. The Holly and the Ivy (Instrumental) 10. While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks (AP) 11. Behold the Lamb of God (Composed by AP and Laura Story) 12. The Theme Of My Song/Reprise (Everyone) Andrew sells this disc individually and in bundles at a discount on his website. That’s my review of the album. What follows here is a meditation I’ve written on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. And in the interest of giving credit away, my inspiration to write it came from listening to Behold the Lamb of God many, many times. _____________________ Incarnation: Isaiah 53:1-6, 12 “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all… Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” God told Isaiah, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa 53:8) Higher? As the Heavens are higher than the earth? Oh, the paradox of salvation! What looks backward to us, He calls “higher.” God’s people look to the east, watching for their King to arrive in majesty. But God quietly sends his angel to a poor teenage girl in the out of the way town of Nazareth. God’s people expect His Messiah to be known by all upon His arrival, but God brings His arrival under cover of darkness into the shelter of a cave doubling, this night, as stable and maternity ward. God’s people anticipate strength, and are delivered a fragile baby. They seek inspiration they can follow, and are given one who would be countless times rejected. They long for their suffering and oppression to end with His coming. And yet He came to suffer, afflicted. They looked for impenetrable strength in His person, and yet He would bear the wounds of us all. To all this, God tells us His way is higher than ours. His plan is to ours what Heaven is to earth. We have our plans. God has His plan. His is higher. We did not know what we needed. When we thought we needed a figurehead, God gave us a sacrificial lamb. When we thought we needed inspiration, God gave us a man of sorrows. When we thought we needed strength to overcome persecution, God gave us One who would become subject to it, even unto death. Ah, but when we thought we were healthy, He took up our infirmities. When we thought we were righteous, our iniquity was laid upon Him. When we thought our own righteousness would save us, by His wounds we were healed. When we thought we were safely “in the fold,” never transgressing God, He was counted among the transgressors. He bore the sins of many. He makes intersession for the transgressors. His thoughts are not our thoughts. This is more than a comparison of intellect. His thoughts transcend time and space—and His eye pierces through all the veils, known and unknown, we throw up around our hearts. His ways are not our ways. This is more than a comparison of ethics. His righteousness is complete and unlimited—and His holiness shines through all the blindness, intentional and accidental, we fumble around in as we walk. His thoughts conceive what we need—this man of sorrows on whom our iniquity would be laid. His ways bring about what we need—a tender shoot with no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him. And yet by the score we are attracted, but by what? Our way is to be drawn to what is beautiful, majestic, strong. But we are none of these things until we are made these things. Our thought is to be saved through changing our minds. But “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him…” (1 Cor 2:9) What has God prepared? Who is this tender shoot from the stump of Jesse? And who are we that He should come?

Russ offered a great story about an art class experience. It reminded me of my own brief career as an art student. I was ten years old. And I had some talent, if you don’t mind my… saying so. If I’d had an Evie Coates to mold and direct my genius, who knows what I might have become? But my artistic growth was stunted by a conviction that Art Is Supposed to Be Serious Business. By the time I recovered, it was too late. B county Board of Education put on a summer enrichment program for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, and I signed up for a painting class. (I signed up for Rocketry too, but that fact doesn’t figure into this story). It was the summer of 1980; the American hostages were still being held in Iran (surprisingly, that fact does figure into this story). The first day of our class, our teacher stalked in five or ten minutes late. She surveyed the bright and willing faces of her nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old students. She seemed unimpressed. The teacher wasn’t much taller than the eleven-year-olds in the class, but she was an imposing presence nevertheless. Her eyes somehow flickered back and forth between heavy-lidded indifference and an artistic wildness that I have since decided was mostly affectation. ut it made an impression on me at the time, I don’t mind telling you. “If you’re here because you want to paint pretty pictures for your mama…” she began, then she paused for effect. Her gaze fell on me; she could see on my face how much I loved my mama, and it disgusted her. “If all you want is to make pretty pictures for your mama, I’d suggest you leave this class right now and go get yourself a camera.” My mama, of course, was paying for my art lessons. She was expecting to get at least one pretty picture out of the deal, and who could blame her? There was an artist in town who made a good living painting pictures of derelict barns and outmoded farm equipment, all in neutral tones. He was one of my mother’s favorites, and I secretly planned to surprise her with a painting in his style. “Art isn’t just pretty pictures,” the teacher was continuing. “Real art says something. Real art makes a stand. Real art is political.” She had made her way to a large stretched canvas that faced against the wall, and even I, the naive ten-year-old, could see a Dramatic Flourish coming. When the teacher whipped the canvas around to face us, it electrified the room. It was a life-sized portrait of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Only when you looked at it closer (the teacher invited all of us to come up and get a closer look), you could see that the pupils of his eyes were actually the silhouettes of people running for terror, and his flowing gray beard was actually the smoke of a burning village at the bottom of the canvas. There were more people running in terror out of the village houses. They were naked, for some reason. Lurid flames licked in the background. It was a political painting, the teacher explained. It took a stand. I don’t know how many Khomeini supporters there were in Middle Georgia at the time, but I had to admit, this painting would definitely give them something to think about. It was strong meat. I gave up on my idea of painting a barn and a rusty harrow. That didn’t Say Anything. I soon realized, however, that I didn’t have Anything Much to Say–not at ten years old, anyway. I ended up painting a picture of a football player. He was the last person remaining on the field; even the stands were empty. In the top-right corner of the canvas, a blue balloon was floating away into the ether. The balloon was supposed to Symbolize Something, though I don’t think I knew what, even at the time. My teacher was not very impressed (see–she wasn’t entirely lacking in judgment). Mama wasn’t impressed either, though she was polite about it. Shortly thereafter I put away my paints and moved on to other interests.

It’s hard for me to get excited about the popular stuff. Then sometimes I read it (or watch it or listen to it) and I remember that just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s lame. That mindset is a remnant of my anti-establishment tendencies in high school. Football was popular, so I hated football. (Now I think it’s a great game, and though its significance was blown wildly out of proportion in my little town, now I find that slice of small town American culture fascinating.) All my friends loved country music, so I hated country music. (Now I live in Nashville, and Alison Krauss regularly makes me cry.) As an adult I was like that with Harry Potter for a while, and with Coldplay, and with the first couple of seasons of Lost. But sometimes something beautiful happens, and the Thing in question attracts the attention of the masses not because it’s sensual or fashionable but because it’s telling the Truth. It is wise without being highbrow, it is accessible without being patronizing and simpleminded. It gives its viewers/readers/listeners credit for being image-bearing souls with complex emotions, relationships, doubts. It acknowledges the suffering in the world and in our hearts–and the universal hope for a reprieve from it. This started out as a recommendation for the bestseller Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. Back to business. When we Petersons moved from suburbia to this place we call the Warren earlier this year, we traded a bigger house in the ‘burbs for a smaller house on a few acres of quiet land. We miss our old house now and then (especially Jamie, who had a big, open kitchen and now has a hallway with a stove and sink) but the trade was a good one. I’m not complaining, but it goes against American culture (and human nature, maybe) to downsize your house. Our kids are getting bigger by the minute and our house shrank by about 25%. One casualty of that downsizing was, sadly, my books. More than half of them are boxed up and in storage, and the shelves that once held stories and ideas and adventure now contain pots and pans and casserole dishes (I told you about the tiny kitchen. We have exactly four cabinet doors’ worth of kitchen storage–have I mentioned that my wife is amazing and (almost) never complains?). Where was I? Ah. Life of Pi. Having little selection, I finally, after hearing our own Eric Peters suggest the book, picked up this one. I went for the popular thing. I joined the millions who read it, and I’m glad I did. I’ve never read a story like it. With the millions of books written every year, somehow Yann Martel wrote something new. I was a little put off by the universalism of the main character, whose comments on God, Jesus, and Krishna are sometimes a little specious. But if you can move past that and into the wonder of the story itself, you’ll find a haunting, engrossing tale. I talked with Eric about the book yesterday, and both of us were moved and mystified by the ending. Here are a few lines from what the author claims are the core chapters of the book. …the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably. And: I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!”–and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. My main contention with the book, now that I think about it, is that the author makes a strong, beautiful case for the value of faith over fact, as if the two don’t mingle and co-exist. The Christian story is profoundly moving whether it’s true or not. But if it didn’t really happen, it is ultimately a waste of our time. That the story of Jesus is as sweet and harrowing as a fairy tale adds weight to the fact that the story actually happened; that it actually happened adds weight to the beauty of the tale. The book claims that the story of Pi Patel will make you believe in God. I don’t know if that’s true or not (since of course I already believe in him). At the very least, it helped me to believe that there are good (sometimes even great) stories still to be told, and the best of them ask us to believe.

Eric Peters‘s body of work addresses a diverse range of topics, but hope is a recurring theme that gently percolates in the midst of it all. And yet,somewhere between the 2001 masterpiece Land of the Living, and Scarce, the flavor of hope that Peters’s work emits has evolved closer to a tone that is more resolute than what came before. And though the complexion of hope has a broad range, the lyrics from Scarce–while intermittently contrite and timorous as in previous efforts, are now strengthened and bolstered by roots that have grown deeper, radiating an underlying grit and secu rity Vaguely reminiscent of the lyrical tone from “Every Breath You Take,” from The Police, Peters opens the project with “Radiate,” a sparkling little pop jewel. This sing-along showpiece, laced with paradox and clever wordplay, is an optimistic, devine ode to the past, present, and future. The tune begins sparsely, with a choppy guitar, embellished with some fanciful Ben Shive keyboard tinkles. Then, with a Ken Lewis drum flurry leading the way to the emerging chorus, producer Brent Milligan employs some production sleight-of-hand. Like an aural avalanche–a wall of sound, if you will–we ride a glorious sonic wave, like a runaway roller coaster. With split second precision, the musical canvas seems to multiply from four to 24 tracks as the slightly built Peters belts out the indelible chorus with the amplitude and intensity of a much larger man. One passage from “Radiate,” “Like a radio song stuck in my brain,” could easily be a tribute to Peters’s own captivating work. Indeed, he’s an artist that carries more hooks in his toolbox than Babe Winkleman. Examing the songs in Peters’ discography, it’s obvious that Peters is a serious student of rock and roll history. But while Peters borrows liberally from diverse nuances of popular music, unlike some carbon copy indie artists, his songs share one consistency–the ubiquitously contagious hook. Even those Peters songs that creatively flirt with enigma–like “Wiseblood” from Bookmark and Land of the Living or “Kansas” from Scarce–we still discover an urgent and arresting passage which clings to our leg like a child with separation anxiety. As usual, Scarce is rife with junctures where lyric and music intertwine, reverberating truth with an endearing emotional rush; enraptured listening moments in which dopamine flows like the white water rapids of a raging river. “The Storm” features at least one such moment. This evocative composition artfully spotlights the eternal “I AM,” with Old Testament allusions and a medieval ambiance that earnestly support the project’s theme. The great paradox of Christianity is that one discovers strength and victory when he most intimately understands and accepts his utter weakness and inability to please God through his own misguided and misplaced efforts. So when in solemn bearing Peters sings, Drenched in mercy and dripping holy tears / Dressed in kingly garments from my toes to my ears, my inner being is inspired and shimmers with a graceful reverence for the gospel’s transcendental, elegant, assured outcome wrapped in a glorious celestial vision. “Save Something for Grace,” features soaring, ethereal background vocals. It’s the nexus of the entire project, masterfully providing thematic linkage to the rest of the songs. Like Chuck Girard in the early Jesus Music song “Tinagera,” Peters creatively personifies a lyrical angle by employing a women’s name. The first verse of “Save Something for Grace” calls to mind Andrew Peterson’s “High Noon,” itself inspired by the classic western of the same name. Ironically, in Peters’s twist from this main street showdown, we face none other than … ourselves: “Quiet eyes in a blaze of shame, like a beast of burden you could never tame.” The line We try to be holy without being human first, in one agile motion, indicts synthetically pious believers, a category to which most of us intermittently slide. It’s a place where looking good counts for more than being good; where our glory is more important than God’s glory. At the same time, Peters reminds us of the ultimate helping hand in the breathtakingly beautiful bridge: We live as though mercy were frail And forgiveness merely a tale We condemn ourselves to a fault When we fail, when we fall We find we’re human after all “Kansas” leads us from thoughtful pondering to the middle-aged version of head-banging, with yet another patented and memorable Eric Peters refrain. In the transparently melancholy tradition of “Yesterday,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “Hold Me Jesus,” enter Peters’s magnum opus “Tomorrow.” This song has the ring of an instant classic, an austere arrangement providing a musical spotlight for the keyboard wizardry of the quickly emerging Ben Shive. The tender dance of Brent Milligan’s cello fused with Shive’s organic piano is a moment of pure, elegant beauty, one of the standout instrumental slices from the project. Like a jigsaw puzzle, nearly every component of Scarce contributes to the whole. Conversely, unlike such a puzzle–each piece of Scarce is exhaustive enough in beauty and thematic consistency to virtually stand on its own. Even the title conveys something meaningful and thematic. While the average title of the average recording often seems like an afterthought, I’ve come to expect something deeper from Eric Peters, because that’s what he consistently delivers. For fun, look for an ’80’s guitar lick or two, reminiscent of The Outfield or The Hooters. Introduce yourself to Mollie Garrigan, lending blue-eyed soul seasoning and spot-on harmony to In the Meantime. Notice the infectious Turtles-like 60’s pop extract that tags “Metropolis.” Discover the latest bag of ear candy that Peters and producer Milligan sprinkle generously through this project–those embedded sugar coated musical moments leading from one musical passageway to another. Certainly, Scarce is worth having for these frivolous, incidental moments alone. Still, there’s a far more exalted and noble reason for making this CD part of your collection: The opportunity to discover Eric Peters, the man–and by extension–that which seems to inspire and galvanize the man’s work, a hope that is not of this world. His work and this project in particular, help integrate the seemingly contradictory elements of that curious paradox–the seemingly intractable tension between those two other “h” words–human and holy. If God chose the weak things of the world to shame and confound those of us that are superficially strong, and if weakness represents a place to find a glimpse of God–it’s quite worth navigating the apparent ambiguity-as it becomes the secret key–indeed, the only key to majestic treasure. Put differently, the denotation of the word “scarce” is two-pronged, with what seem like ostensibly contradictory definitions. While “scarce” is often defined as “Insufficient to meet a demand or requirement,” it also means, “Hard to find, or rare.” Decidedly far removed from trivial, it’s the blending and bonding of these two disparate definitions that marks Eric Peters’s Scarce as stately and grand. ——————————— From the Proprietor: Eric is a contributor to the Rabbit Room, and we’re pleased to offer his two most recent records for sale in the store. Be sure and visit his website at www.ericpeters.net.

If you’ve ever tried to paint a self-portrait, here’s what you find—only the truth will work. In school I was given this art assignment, and as I went back and forth from the mirror to the paper, I tried to draw what I saw. The thing is, I also wanted to improve upon what I saw—brighter eyes, a more chiseled nose, greater definition in my cheekbones. Here’s what vanity got me—a portrait of someone who didn’t really look like me and a B-. But one of his self-portraits stands out to me and has a lot to do with my fascination for this Dutch post-impressionist. It is “Self portrait with Bandaged Ear.” He painted it in 1889, the same year he produced Starry Night and the year before he took his own life by tragically and poetically shooting himself in the heart. Back in those days, psychological maladies were simply called “madness.” Debilitating depression? Madness. Paranoia? Madness. Acute epilepsy? Madness. Cutting off your ear and sending it across town? Madness. He was officially labeled “mad.” Add to this the fact that van Gogh was also something of a growing celebrity in the art world. So along with his madness he now had a mountain of humiliating shame to go with it. So what did he do? Lay low? No. He painted. And at least twice, while in the asylum, he painted self-portraits. And in both of them, the bandaged ear is on display, facing the viewer. What is truly fascinating about this portrait is how the artist was willing to capture this moment of great shame—not once but at least twice—and paint with the bandaged side showing. Its an incredible indictment of my heart. How willing am I to lead with the fact that I’ve got a lot of things in me that aren’t right? Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear hangs in my office (not the original) to remind this pastor that if I’m drawing the self-portrait wrong, I’m concealing from my congregation the fact that I am broken. My wounds need binding. I need asylum. And if I can’t show that honestly, how will anyone see Christ in me? Here’s some irony: today Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear is worth millions, but what the artist is showing us in it willingly is his own spiritual and relational poverty. He faithfully captures his greatest moment of shame. He shows the bandaged side. And probably no one reading this could afford to buy it now. This is analogous to how I believe God sees His people—fully exposed in our short-comings but of incalculable worth to Him—and it is how we should see others, and be willing to be seen by others.

Having read The Great Divorce many times over the years, I’ve found this classic from the great C.S. Lewis to be full of startling clarity and depth on the differences between Heaven and Hell. The only thing both have in common is that both begin in the human will; we can either let Heaven enter us and rule in us to blossom into love and goodness, or allow Hell to infect and reign in our hearts by the daily refusal to submit to Heaven. Our hearts were created to be indwelt, unified with, and empowered by their Creator; without him we are merely a craving lack, a hunger, a restless need, and we will unsuccessfully attempt to fill that infinite need with the finite world. The Great Divorce is a heart-forming book that clearly delineates what it means to live in union with Christ, and what it means to live and die without him. Heaven can exist in the worst outer circumstances if a human being relies on God in Christ; Hell will be our experience even in the best worldly conditions if we push away the Lover of our souls. This book is is a perfect companion to another Lewis classic, The Screwtape Letters.

Even if you haven’t heard Room to Breathe, its still likely you’ve heard Andy Gullahorn. He’s what I’d call a heavy lifter by trade. He writes lyrics, plays guitar, arranges vocals and adds production help to the work of artists like Jill Phillips and Andrew Peterson. I call him a heavy lifter because he’s often in the fray taking what might be a decent song and making it a great song. Far from flashy, Andy’s steady and artful hand seems to consistently find what fits a song well, and the result is that he crafts structure that holds a song in place. Heavy lifting. Finding a talent like this is rare enough, and Andy, on his website, says he’s happy in the supporting role. Pick up Andy’s record here in the Rabbit Room, or visit his website.

Traveling west on Interstate 40 across the rain-drenched dales of middle Tennessee, my mind is distinctly set in a honing pattern upon home, that cradle necessary as Mesopotamia to ancient civilization. It is a late Sunday afternoon, I’ve been driving for nearly six hours through the rain-riddled Appalachians, and I’m more than a little weary of the pavement and the sunflower seeds I’ve been coddling for some time in an attempt to keep myself both interested and alert to the path before me. At this point in the drive, a mere 60 some-odd miles east of Nashville, the divided 4-lane thoroughfare dissects and criss-crosses the northwestward-flowing Caney Fork River a number of times as nature and man perform a delicate dance weaving across and above one another, each trying to stay out of the other’s way, neither doing that great a job of it. In my journeys along this route, I have often looked out at the river’s disappearing bends and jealously taken notice of fly-fishermen wading into the shallow depths, congregations of cattle knee-deep in the cool waters, and children tubing on the water’s sluggish surface, all of them partaking wholeheartedly, and in their own method, of this naturally scenic venue. On many occasions I have wanted to stop dead in my tracks just to sit and watch the flow and succession of it all, even to wend my way down to its shores. But each time, commerce or a regimented schedule propelled me forward, and succumb to the river I did not. If practicality were not in my predisposition, I suppose those banks would be all-too familiar with my face, fingers and toes already. But I digress; the extent of my practicality is another journal entry altogether…. This afternoon’s sighting of the Caney Fork, due to the day’s earlier dark quenching rains, hinges upon that which remains hidden, less on that which stands visible to the naked eye. The hidden things of earth do not necessarily always submit to those in plain sight; a mistake we often fail to make. A shallow but unmistakable fog, like a reflection of the river itself, hangs over the waterscape obscuring the liquid flesh beneath it, holding it steady and undisturbed as life itself tends to sleep beneath summer stars’ quilting. The dense pall of water droplets are held prisoner to the river’s banks as it coils and curls itself into a slow ghastly hovering, menacing yet possessing no appendages to stretch forth and stake claim to anything tangible. The fog merely levitates over the river’s surface like a visible aroma, quiet, aloof and hanging on for dear life. Now, as if the sky, already too weary from unleashing its pent-up wrath and anger – a hyperventilating child after a long, shaking sob – is beholden to the very images it helped create in this damp, craggy, wooded corner of earth. Everything stands still: the river held motionless and invisible beneath the plumage of mist, I, rapt with attention in sheer awe of this sight gracing my eyes, and the tired, cried-out sky now limp overhead as it passes without so much as a whimper. And what to do but stand still? We spectators can command no more, the scene demands no less. Life, amid all its grunting and groaning, sneaks ahead of us, invisible beneath our blanket of stalled being and colorless habit. We float its delicate surface and criss-cross the alluvial boundaries attempting to stay out of its unhurried way. But, occasionally, by breaking the surface tension, we seek to remember and cling to the vitality of life that exists above, below, outside and within ourselves.

Sometimes I must admit I wish the opposite were true. I wish I could look forward to vast treasures and great wealth. Instead, Randall nailed it on the head when he spoke of the importance of relationship, specifically speaking the idea that “the closest thing we have to Jesus on earth is one another.” Many Sundays contained within my mental recesses of childhood (it’s really all one big ‘recess’) were spent at my grandparents. They were, and still remain, the perfect Baptist, Bible-belt grandparents. The small, country Baptist church boasted a 90+ year-old worship leader and the choir would take whoever wanted to sit up there. I would tag along with my grandmother, sitting up there just so I could look out over the crowd and seem more important than the other kids (after all, the most important were on stage). Songs like “I’ll Fly Away”, “When The Roll is Called Up Yonder”, “I’ve Got A Mansion” and the like instilled within me from an early age that there was a vast storage of riches in heaven and they were available to the good ones here on earth. When I was nice to a friend, I pictured a new gemstone in my crown, while telling lies reduced the size of my future home. After all, Jesus left to prepare me a new place and it’s certainly the kind super-athletes like Michael Jordan would be proud of. I’ve always kept that childhood mentality until, sorry to say, fairly recently. The N.T. book of Revelation seems to pervade this “vast riches” mentality (as does the Trump-ly ornate TBN set). But something about that seems, well, materialistic. As a pastor preaching sermons each week that touch on the down and out and God’s heart for the oppressed, the afterlife as Uncle Scrooge’s vault seems rather funny – an eternal tease of the poor finally receiving riches when it won’t even matter anymore. In Ephesians, Paul prays for us to understand a few things about God and His Kingdom – one of those being “his vast inheritance in the saints…” That single line made me pause and seemed to flip everything around, suddenly causing miles of other passages to make sense (at least to me). The riches are His people. The inheritance to come can be found in the people being saved around us. Indeed, God’s most prized creation – man and woman – is indeed the treasure that Heaven will be full of. I’m learning this changes the way I view the world around me. Building privacy fences here on Planet Earth keeps me away from the future treasure I was so looking forward to (and which my grandparents still sing about). We’re not leaving this ole’ world behind to find some lavish resort all to ourselves. We’re fully surrounded by the very treasure and inheritance of God right now and someday the Kingdom of God will be fully revealed and restored and we will be made new, but we will still be all around each other just as we were before. Only we will be completely who we were made to be. Thus, you are my treasure, like it or not. And dreaming of “flying away” only keeps me from appreciating the beauty of you. Eugene Peterson writes about this in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. He mentions people who say they want to get in touch with Creation and then they speak of escaping to mountains or retiring to oceanside villas. But instead, Peterson notes that to get in touch with the Creator, to truly appreciate Creation is to spend time with humanity. “Go to a tavern” or “ride the bus” is Peterson’s recommendation for truly getting in touch with these things. I’m not as inclined to agree as I wish I was. But I’m beginning to understand a bit more…

I nursed my resentments and disgrace like young plants, watering them, trimming back the dead leaves, making sure they got enough sunlight. At times like these, I believe, Jesus rolls up his sleeves, smiles roguishly, and thinks, “This is good.” He lets me get nice and crazy, until I can’t take my own thinking and solutions for one more moment. The next morning, I got on my knees and prayed, “Please, please help me. Please let me feel You while I adjust to not getting what I was hoping for.” And then I remembered Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don’t be an asshole. In this excerpt by Anne Lamott from her book titled “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith,” she speaks of Jesus as “roguish.” Upon consulting thesaurus.com to make sure it meant what I thought it meant, here are some of the synonyms I discovered, much to my delight, adding more slashy, timid pencil marks to my mind’s always shifting and surprising sketch of Jesus: “scalawag.” “black sheep.” “trickster.” And my personal favorite…”rascal.” Is it possible, just as in a friendship or a romance where one repeatedly uncovers attributes that draw one to another more and more, that I could like Him, love Him, even more? It doesn’t sound like that would be a good or a smart realization…I have this imposing sense that I should already know everything there is to make me love Him. Here in my thirtieth year, shouldn’t I have the laundry list of attributes memorized by now? Feeling very small and elementary, slightly behind the curve, I should be punished by some ugly, wiry-haired teacher sort with “I already love Jesus perfectly” write-offs on the blackboard. I know that I should already love Him as much as is humanly possible…but here is more. How can that be?

This may be preaching to the choir here in the Rabbit Room, but I wrote an article back in early July about the upcoming final Harry Potter book. I thought this would be an appropriate place to re-post it. I know for some it’s old news – most of the world knows the fate of Harry Potter by now – but the article was intended more for those unfamiliar with or suspicious of the boy wizard. Maybe like me, you’ve met people who believe that the Harry Potter stories are “demonic” or at the very least fruitless. But our family has quite enjoyed them and found them worth our while. As I reread this article, methinks I doth protest too much… In my zeal to persuade Potter haters, I might be making more of the Potter books than is called for. Madeleine L’Engle (God rest her soul) said that she read one of the books and thought it was fine, but that there was “nothing underneath” the story. While I get what she was saying and would hesitate to say Rowling is on par with Tolkien or Lewis, we still enjoyed her books immensely and found more in them than perhaps L’Engle did. I guess at the end of the day we thought they were good clean fun. For whatever it’s worth, here are my 2 cents: ————————————— What We’ve Learned From Harry Potter (July 3rd 2007) While our culture braces itself for the one-two punch of not only a new Harry Potter film, but also the final book in the series about the boy wizard, I find myself thinking about what the bible has to say about magic. Right on the heels of the movie version of “Harry Potter And The Order of The Phoenix”, the final book in J.K. Rowling’s enchanting series (pun intended), “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows,” will hit shelves. We’ll most likely hear from the usual suspects: literary critics will say the books are lightweight. Librarians will extol the virtues of these books that have got kids reading, well, anything again. And segments of Christianity will denounce the books as endorsing the occult. (Never mind that Rowling’s books are sprinkled generously with potent Christian symbols and values – i.e. in “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” the words that Harry Potter invokes to defend himself against an onslaught of demonic tormentors are “expecto patronum,” which can be translated quite literally to “I look for a savior”. And in case that wasn’t clear enough, it is the image of a white stag – a classic literary symbol of Christ – that comes to Harry’s rescue. Never mind, too, that real life witches denounce Harry Potter almost as much as church folks do. Harry is more resilient than we thought, having survived [thus far] not only the evil Lord Voldemort, but criticisms from almost every corner of popular culture.) Now, don’t get me wrong – having lived with a stepfather who dabbled in the occult, witchcraft is not a topic I take lightly. While I won’t go into great detail here about that part of my history, nor offer a lengthy defense of why our family loves these books, suffice it to say that we don’t feel that enjoying the world of Harry Potter in any way compromises our faith. On the contrary, we read the books together as a family and find them rich with opportunities to discuss our faith with our boys. Take for instance the most obvious theme of magic, which is usually what stirs the ire of Harry’s more religious detractors. Having finished reading the first book, “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone”, Taya and I seized upon the opportunity to talk with our boys about what scripture has to say about magic and witchcraft. We explained that in books like Harry Potter – as well as many fantasy books including the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of The Rings – the author doesn’t necessarily employ magic as an endorsement of the occult, but rather as a literary device that serves to tell a larger story, which in the cases of the stories I just named is less about wizardry than it is about valor, loyalty, and even faith. Then we read 1 Samuel 15:23 together: “for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft…” And here we got to the heart of it. At its worst, magic in these stories is used to manipulate situations so that the magic user can get what he or she wants. In essence, magic used in this way is saying “my will be done”, in contrast to Christ’s example to live our lives surrendered, praying “not my will, but Thy will be done.” But I suspect this is the very kind of rebellious “witchcraft” that we may be guilty of every day, and this kind of witchcraft should worry us more than the fictional variety in the world of Harry Potter. Isn’t the constant battle of wills between God and the human heart the chief concern of Christianity? Of all the sins we need to be delivered of, isn’t self will the most thorny and persistent? More distressing yet: how many of us if we are honest with ourselves are guilty of using religion and even the precious Word of God to manipulate situations and drive personal agendas? I know I’ve been guilty of it more often than I would like to admit, and I think it’s safe to say that the problems of self will and spiritual manipulation are still among the greater challenges that the church faces today. This kind of subtle witchcraft is much more insidious than any of the hocus pocus that raises the hackles of well intentioned believers who might line up outside bookstores to protest the latest Harry Potter book. It’s this witchcraft that must certainly break the heart of God. If we are going to spend energy protesting the evils of magic and sorcery, it might be best spent by examining the rebellious, sorcerous intentions of our own hearts that daily seek to say “my will be done.” At the time we read the first book, we had been living in a tiny farmhouse that was in pretty rough shape. It was a far cry from the kind of home my wife had hoped for, but the rent was ridiculously cheap and enabled us to stay in the ministry in the early years. Daily she prayed with our twin boys for our own home – nothing extravagant, but something that she felt was her own and that wasn’t overrun by mice (as our rental house was). Closing the book and sitting on the edge of the boys’ bed, we talked about how we could have tried to get a house for ourselves, trying to make it happen any number of ways, to say “our will be done.” Instead, we chose to prayerfully seek God and wait for Him to reveal His will. Within weeks of that conversation, through an extraordinary set of circumstances we were blessed to find a wonderful house that was exactly what Taya and the boys had been praying for all those years. It was a teachable moment in their lives about the virtue of waiting on the Lord and not resorting to the subtle witchcrafts of self-will – A teachable moment delivered to our doorstep by the unlikely Harry Potter. We’ve come to love that boy wunderkind. There is a lot of speculation about his fate in this final book. I’m hoping he survives, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up laying down his life for his friends. Either way, I’m sure it will give our family another teachable moment and a context to explore the rich mystery of what Lewis’ Aslan calls the “old magic” of Christ’s sacrificial love.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours. This is a line delivered by Hector, a character from The History Boys, a movie I viewed this week. Despite enjoying this film myself, I don’t particularly recommend it. In fact, that’s not the purpose of this post. But as we peek inside the door—you, me, and all of us—in this emerging community called The Rabbit Room, these words seem to resonat with vigor, almost as if they had been framed and matted on the front door. They are words that seem particularly relevant in the context of what Andrew Peterson has in mind for this place. As I considered some thoughts from The Far Country, shortly after it was released, I remember being astounded by a line which elegantly reinforce the words that Hector uttered in The History Boys. Andrew Peterson/Pierce Pettis from the song More: A thing resounds when it rings true Ringing all the bells inside of you Like a golden sky on a summer eve Your heart is tugging at your sleeve And you cannot say why There must be more Whether dead or alive, when the work of an author or artist communicates that which we intuitively know to be true, it’s as if we have found a kindred spirit. Innermost thoughts which may have simmered for years, vague and undefined—are suddenly given clarity, a voice, and a name. Should we really be surprised when those that do it best are still on our list of favorites—five, fifty, one hundred years or more after their death? As you consider the relevance of the beauty and truth found in the art contained in The Rabbit Room, may it be personal, and real, and may it last.