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Being a self-described dreamer, I can tell you that having a dream is a complex predicament. It’s one of the strongest forces in our lives and sometimes gives us purpose and direction. It can also be as fragile as a dried leaf, at times crumbling between our fingers to be blown away by the wind. Dreaming isn’t just wishing on a star; it’s vision-casting, planning, implementing, perspiration, and perseverance. And even those who take the right steps in the right order are not guaranteed that the dream won’t hit a dead end or a major detour. I sat down recently with Chris and Jenna Badeker – the husband-wife band known as Wild Harbors.  I’ve been friends with them for nine years, and I definitely see them as fellow dreamers, but they might not be interested in that title. Jenna: Dream is such an interesting word. I think it’s one I’ve had a tough relationship with over the past decade. Chris: I always kind of bristled at that language of what we do like, “Go to Nashville and chase your dream.” Jenna: It sounds fun, and there are so many people who get into that thought. It’s been really interesting for me, through life and reflection and clearing out old stuff from my parents and finding old things from my childhood, little kid Jenna totally dreamed about singing and writing songs and being a writer and an author. Those were dreams. I think it’s interesting to realize that God has worked to draw us into paths that tap into those dreams that we both probably had when we were younger. I couldn’t have articulated as a young adult, “This is my dream and I’m going to chase it down and do x, y, z to make it happen.” I think there is some good and bad in that. On one hand, it helps maintain some groundedness – this isn’t some fairytale situation. We have budgets and need to pay our bills; we need to be practical about how we go about this. But there is also some potential for a lack of dreaming to continue. Chris: For as much as I kind of bristle at that dream idea, I’m trying to analyze that and pick apart why that is. For myself in particular, I think there is this tendency to take the dream and—just as we are attaining it—to move the bar further out to make it unattainable again. For myself as a kid, if you were to ask me, “What is the dream?” My dream was to be an artist. And that feels embarrassingly ill-conceived and not fleshed out, and there’s no marketing or plan behind that. It feels very naked, but that was my dream to be an artist. And at some point, whether that was in middle school, high school, or college, I was creating art and making art – I was an artist. Jenna: And are you talking visual art when you’re saying artist, or just anything? Chris: I think of an artist as a chef, a musician, a painter, a poet. I hold all of those under an umbrella for myself. I still want to be an artist – a musical artist, a singer, all those things. That’s what I want. But when I became an artist I didn’t have a sense of, “My dreams have come true.“ I had a new sense, “I need to be a full-time artist.” And then that bar got a little further out like, “Well, if I was a real artist I wouldn’t be working in a library, I’d be working on my art all the time.” And where did that come from? Maybe not the same place that the dream to become an artist came from. It feels almost like sabotage, like every time we realize a dream, it keeps morphing into a different shadow that mutates it a bit in a way that feels less and less satisfying. Maybe I’m just weary of the way dreams can get morphed and mutated and twisted through the lens of “I need to be doing this really professionally and really well, and maybe it was fine to dream of being an artist at the beginning, but now I need to be a serious artist.” And that feels like a way to crush the dream at its root and then the playfulness gets lost and the creativity gets lost and it becomes a job. It becomes something to fail at. Dave: I’m in the middle of reading the book Say Yes by Scott Erickson, and it’s got a compelling subtitle: “Discover the surprising life beyond the death of a dream.” I’ve been reflecting on how sometimes the big dream dies. I also ponder about the smaller dreams within the dream that sometimes experience mini-deaths. They can be very disheartening and very frustrating to deal with because we only plan for success. But the mini-deaths can also be an amazing guide and teacher. Has that been true for you? Jenna: I’m realizing that in making music my main career, focus, and source of income, I have subconsciously created these unintended weights upon what the original dream was. Sometimes I think, “You are doing it wrong, or I’m not doing it good enough.” Then I drill down into that – what is making me say I’m not good enough? It’s not as actually evaluative as my head wants to tell me it is. We look sideways, and we look on social media and we’re like, “This person’s releasing all these songs and we haven’t released a new song that we’ve written in years, so we’re doing it wrong.” Or “I’m not booking as many shows as these people are, so I am failing.” I think I’m at a juncture now of trying to take a lot of steps back and seeing there are – like you said – a lot of little deaths that are happening along the way. If there’s anything that can kill dreams, it is a really out-of-control inner critic who is going to stamp all that right out of me. “Of course, I’m not going to release anything new because I can’t write because I feel bad at my job.” That’s not sustainable. If I let some of those things die away from what I thought a full-time vocational musician should do, is there room for the deep-down core of that dream to still have a beating heart and to gain a sure foundation looking differently than what I imagined? Chris: The ability to create freely and to create joyfully just starts to deteriorate under the weight of our own added expectations. I guess we have to reckon with some of those little disappointments. Maybe it’s not meant to look like someone else. And it’s okay if we can’t out-finger-pick Andrew Peterson or we can’t out-harmonize The Civil Wars or we can’t out-suave Johnnyswim. There is no success for us trying to piggyback or replicate the accolades that other people have. Instead of having to say it’s okay, we’re not going to find our thing trying to follow those trails. It’s been freeing to cut that tether and unhitch our trailer from certain things, and that gives us freedom enough to say we’re allowed to do what we want to do, and it doesn’t have to look like what any of our peers are doing. That actually feels more artistic and more creative. Dave: Now you’ve created something new and released a brand new single “Daylight.” Can you share the theme of the track? Jenna: This song came about during the pandemic. Nashville had a very mild winter, and while we were chained at home, we could still go outside. Chris and I had taken our Christmas money that year and bought bikes because there are so many amazing trails around Nashville. One day we were riding and I started making up the song on my bike. I positioned my phone on the holder and hit the audio recorder and just started singing and riding and feeling this rush. I was physically moving forward. Everything had been feeling like we were stuck – time was passing and none of us were moving anywhere. It felt so good to feel the sun and be rolling down that hill. This melody and words came – there is daylight, and it is here, and I don’t know how much we get but I really want to do good things with it. We use the phrase “make the most of it” so often, I don’t feel like I can fully understand what that phrase even means. But to actually pause and take stock that you have these 15 hours or so of daylight in a day. What do I want to do with it? And not “Are you spending it right?” Because that’s my bent – are you doing the right things with it? Instead of spending it right, I’m focusing on spending it well. I want to do great things with it in a way that is inviting and exciting. I want to invite other people into that – we have permission to do good things with our time. I want to do that together. Chris: For me, it’s a song about spending a day well, but it’s also that this day represents what I do every day, and what I do every day represents the sum of this life that we are living together. You only really get to answer that question, “Have I spent my life well?” one time, at the end of your life when you can see the whole thing in retrospect. But you get to answer, “Did I spend today well?” every single day, seven times a week, 365 days a year. Dave: How does it feel to be releasing the first new original Wild Harbor songs in a few years? Chris: I think primarily it’s excitement. Releasing remixes and stuff felt like a way to keep things going from a logistics standpoint for us, but there’s not the same feeling of show-and-tell putting something like this out there. It feels like the next season. If that was Season One, this is definitely Season Two. It has been about a year that we’ve been sitting on these masters. We’ve shared them with a few friends and family here and there to show them what we’re up to. Even those initial reactions helped me to remember other people are really excited to hear this too. When it’s just a thing in your own house and in your own head, it’s easy to forget the part of the interaction that I love the most – the sharing. It’s fun to get back to that season. Jenna: We’re not doing this to increase a number on a chart, we’re doing this because we felt passionate about a story and we want to share that story with other people. So it’s really fun for me to hear it again and be reminded about why we do what we do and the prospect of having that new season.

Housemoot.com opens in six days! In case you missed the announcement, Housemoot is the Rabbit Room’s new pop-up digital conference, replete with a curated collection of pre-recorded lectures from some of our favorite writers, artists, theologians, and musicians. Because Hutchmoot, the Rabbit Room’s annual in-person conference, can be hard to get tickets to, we are offering Housemoot as a resource kit that you can use to create a “moot” experience of your own. We hope that it is a gathering point for your community. Go to Housemoot.com to learn more, buy tickets, or (if you are already a Rabbit Room member) let us know you’re joining Housemoot. Join Housemoot By way of whetting your appetite for the feast that is Housemoot, below is an excerpt with Andrew Osenga from a series of interviews with artists and creators about how music has helped them move through experiences of loss and grief. [If this topic speaks to where you are at right now, check out our new Music and Grief playlist and let these thoughtful, moving songs walk you through exactly what Andrew is talking about in the interview.] [Special thanks to Dave Trout and UTR Media for putting this interview series together for Housemoot!]

Editor’s Note: After the death of C. S. Lewis, Major Warren Lewis lived at The Kilns in Oxford, spent time with friends, edited his famous brother’s letters, and did a little writing of his own. Then, out of the blue, he got a letter from a stranger on the far side of the world. Over the years that followed, he and Dr. Blanche Biggs, a missionary in Papua New Guinea, shared a vibrant correspondence. They discussed everything: their views on faith, politics, humor, the legacy of C. S. Lewis, and their own trials and longings. Enjoy a sample of their letters and a small window into their close friendship. Read the full collection in The Major and the Missionary. 3 August 1969 My dear Major Lewis, This correspondence has come a long way from the discussion of writing books which began it. I am too busy these days to think of writing except as a far-off dream; certainly not until I retire. I had serious thoughts about retiring after the present term of service, but our canny Bishop has given me a new job as Diocesan Medical Co-ordinator, and it is like creating a new portfolio; there is a fair amount of organizing to be done. I can’t foresee handing over to someone else in less than four or five years, so long as I have health and energy to keep at the job, so the Bishop will have me for longer than I planned, and my nice little cottage by the sea is fading into the future…sick patients still have to be nursed! Your holiday in Ireland sounds delightful; other people who have been there love the country too. Of course, you would look on it as your home. Have you relatives or friends still living there? I must confess that the news lately has shown up the Irish in a bad light, with their fights and riots on religious matters. It takes centuries to live down old injustices and prejudices. But our hustling cities are creating a bad kind of society too. Our Papuans are infuriating in their failure to value time, but in our more sober moments we realize that they have values that we have not. They rarely suffer from high blood pressure, coronary disease etc.… We are trying to help us all spiritually and to grow in Christian love by having weekly Bible Study classes. They are not my line of country at all, but anyway we are all trying. After a rather unfruitful study of St. James’ epistle we have now come on to Joy Davidman’s Smoke on the Mountain, a book that I have read and admired several times. We seem able to build more on her than on St. James! Basically of course, spiritual renewal must depend on prayer, and one has so little time and less energy for it. Life has been full to the brim of activity in the past three months, very interesting but very wearying. Today is the first day when I have declared war on “jobs” and determined to be social—on paper. If you will forgive my curiosity, I would love to know how the Gresham boys are faring. There is little mention of them in the book you edited about your brother… With all good wishes, Dr. Biggs 28 August 1969 Dear Dr. Biggs What a pleasant surprise it was to open your magazine and there to meet you, if not in the flesh at any rate by camera. I cannot say that I found the articles to be “simple” in the sense of being written for simple reads; to me they were just well-written and informative… I have also to thank you for a letter dated 3rd of this month, which was very interesting, though I’m sorry to see you in such an unsettled state. To an outsider it looks rather like a case of “too many cooks.” Anyway I hope and trust that the whole “tohubohu” (delightful and self-explanatory French word!) will sort itself out to your satisfaction. To get on with the job in a period of re-organization is one of the hardest things I know. Yes, my poor Ulster is passing through a bad patch, but I’ve seen many such before. The tragedy is that Protestant and Catholic are, one can say, born hating each other. I’m 3rd generation Ulster on my father’s side and on my mothers, 5th; I’ve lived out of Ulster for fifty years; and the other night when I saw on Telly the Protestant boys marching and heard the band playing “The Boyne Water” I felt as if I could throw a bomb with the best of them. Of course I said an instant prayer for forgiveness, but if I can react like that, imagine what the uneducated living cheek by jowl with their detested neighbors must be like! A sad, sad business… One great thing about retirement is that you do have the time for prayer but alas, not always the inclination; but one must stick doggedly to a routine and pray for inclination. My plan is to get up at 6 a.m., make a cup of tea, then pray while the whole world around me is quiet. I’ve long ago given up the almost universal habit of saying my main prayer last thing at night—about the worst hour one could choose, I think. I’m glad you like Smoke upon the Mountain which my brother thought highly of both before and after he met Joy. You ask about the Gresham boys for whom I’m glad to say I’ve no responsibility, they both being over 21. Douglas, the younger one is now a farmer in Tasmania and appears to be making a success of it—married to a nice girl (English) and with two children. The elder boy, David, is something of a problem. He is a strict orthodox Jew, intelligent, with no vices, but who at around the age of 28 has never earned a penny in his life, though he works hard. He is just back from a year at Jerusalem University and is now in England where instead of looking for a job, he is about to enter Cambridge University—to study the Talmud and Arabic! He inherited about £6,000 from a grandmother and it is I suppose on this that he has lived ever since. But even £6,000 does not last forever, and what then? We are all troubled about him, but he himself is as unconcerned as if he had inherited £6,000 a year… In case you have any curiosity about what I look like I enclose this snap. I’m the old gentleman in glasses and the other is my houseman. It was taken at a village on the Suffolk coast where we sometimes borrow a cottage. We go back there for a fortnight at the end of next month. I don’t expect you have gorse in Papua—the lovely rich golden wild stuff at our backs. With all best wishes, yours, Warren Lewis

I (Joel J Miller) first met Karen Swallow Prior a decade ago while working at Thomas Nelson as vice president of editorial and acquisitions. I signed her book Fierce Convictions—a biography of British social reformer, educator, and abolitionist Hannah More—back in 2013. I’ve followed and benefitted from Prior’s work ever since. She’s written and edited several other books, including (most recently) The Evangelical Imagination, On Reading Well, and Booked. Her guide to the classics series for B&H Publishing features such titles as Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Sense and Sensibility, Frankenstein, and The Scarlet Letter. Beyond her books, Prior’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Christianity Today, First Things, Vox, and several other publications. She also pens a monthly column for Religion News Service and has recently started her own newsletter here on Substack, The Priory. In this conversation, Prior and I talk about the role of imagination in shaping our experience of the world—whether we realize it or not. Karen Swallow Prior. Photo © Ashlee Glen Joel Miller: As I read your new book, The Evangelical Imagination, I reflected on the role imagination plays in our daily experience. We know the world through both external sensation and internal imagination, but even the external is filtered through our imagination because it’s how we make meaning of what we sense. Our entire experience is one of the imagination. Karen Swallow Prior: Exactly. Imagination is so much more than just the obvious, creative activity we tend to think of when we think about “using” our imagination. All of our thinking, dreaming, and processing relies on the imagination. As you said, our entire experience! JM: In the 1990s, it was popular in some circles to talk about worldview. Since Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age in 2007, it seems more popular to speak in terms of social imaginary, a term you put to good use. What do these concepts share and how do they differ? KSP: This is such an important question. The two concepts are related but refer to very different elements of thinking. Worldview is the conscious, rational application of beliefs or principles to some specific, concrete question or issue. It is a very cognitive and intentional activity. Social imaginaries, as Charles Taylor describes them, are precognitive, communal pools of inherited or traditional visions, assumptions, myths, metaphors, and so on. These lurk beneath the surface, often driving or directing our sense of how things should go, whether we realize it or not. Obviously, there are thoughts that can fit into either category. But a social imaginary contains elements that we often don’t know are there until something causes us to realize such an assumption exists. That something might be an experience in a different culture where expectations differ, or a conversation or book (ahem!) that brings to the surface something assumed that is not a conscious, chosen belief or understanding. For example, a Christian might apply a biblical worldview in deciding how to vote. But the sense that it is a duty of a responsible citizen to vote might originate from within a particular social imaginary. JM: You’ve written a bookish memoir, Booked, along with a very popular book on how to read well, On Reading Well. What role do books play in shaping our imaginations? KSP: Books, of course, are not the only way to shape our imaginations. As we noted above, humans use the imagination all the time. But books—stories in particular—expand our imaginations with materials, images, characters, events, outcomes, possibilities, people, problems, solutions, disasters, delights, and so much more than we’d ever “see” in our minds without them. We could say the same of any works of the imagination—film, music, and so on. But I do think there is something inherently more rigorous to the mind (and therefore the imagination) about worlds created by words. Words must be translated into images, feelings, sensations, and experiences. Words are more mediated, requiring more from us, and therefore yielding more for us. JM: Are there ways of being more intentional about that shaping? KSP: Absolutely. And it’s not an all-or-nothing deal. Whatever our entertainment/leisure time diet is, we can always be more intentional about taking in more of the good, true, and beautiful and less of the easy, comforting, and familiar. If it takes a year to read one great classical work, you’ll have read that work when the year is over. It will stay with you forever no matter how long it takes. You can also be intentional about shutting out more of the noise (no easy feat these days). That’s something I’m working on myself because, in my case, my life centers on the good stuff—but I have also been drawn in too often and too easily to the bad stuff (the latest Twitter dustup or church scandal or whatever). It’s not that we ought to ignore or escape from the real world. But it’s about being more intentional with what we do in our discretionary time to form our minds, tastes, and imaginations toward a desire for the good. Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books JM: One of the points you make in The Evangelical Imagination is that a massive overlap exists between Victorian and evangelical sensibilities since they were concurrent social movements. That seems true today as well with American Christianity. How do we tease out what’s Christian from what’s merely American? KSP: Well, this is really what I’m trying to model in The Evangelical Imagination. The fact is that the Victorian Age, taking place during the reign of the British Empire, affected all of the world, especially America. So what we see in contemporary American evangelicalism was shaped significantly by Victorian culture. But what I’m trying to show in the book is that it doesn’t matter what culture a Christian society is or was part of or developed alongside. The task will always be the same: to distinguish between what is cultural and what is eternal. We will always be products of our culture to some degree. And that isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just a matter of discerning the difference. I was explaining to a friend recently, for example, it’s not wrong to have an altar call or ask people to raise their hands to make a decision for Christ (something I discuss in the book). But it is wrong to assume that this method is universal and necessary for all church gatherings across time and place and that those who don’t practice it are wrong. Yet those who have grown up without knowing anything else can find themselves assuming that churches that don’t use this modern practice are somehow less Christian. That’s another example of an assumption that is part of the social imaginary. JM: Americans tend to be highly individualistic and therefore prone to biases and blindspots when it comes to larger social constructs. What impact do you think that has on seeing the role of institutions and shaping our imaginations? KSP: This is an important point. As I said above, the duty of distinguishing between what is cultural and what is eternal in our faith applies to all Christians in all times and places. Yet I do think this task of distinguishing is a bit harder for contemporary Americans because of the way we have been formed—as you say, more individualistic, more autonomous, and so forth. Our less communal culture puts up particular obstacles to seeing the way a social imaginary works. JM: Since we presuppose most of the stories and metaphors that shape our imaginations, we’re mostly unaware of them and how they function in our lives. What can we do to become more aware of these formative stories and metaphors? I think the first step is to recognize that language itself is metaphorical. This understanding comes more easily for those who study other languages. (Think of the difference, for example, between what we say in English about the weather—it is cold—as opposed to the same idea in French—it makes the cold. It’s a subtle difference but shows how the same experience can be expressed in terms of existence or createdness.) Once you become aware of how language itself is metaphorical, it is easier to see the patterns and archetypes in a culture for expressing those ideas, even the Christian ones. Conversion, for example (to which I devote a chapter in the book) is both a key Christian concept and one central to human experience. We see conversion stories everywhere! JM: Final question: You can invite any three authors for a lengthy meal. Language is not an obstacle. Who do you pick, why, and how does the conversation go? KSP: I am inviting Jonathan Swift (eighteenth-century British satirist and Anglican priest), Flannery O’Connor (twentieth-century American Catholic writer), and Gustave Flaubert (nineteenth-century French novelist). O’Connor brings her mother, Flaubert brings the wine, but Swift is not allowed to contribute the main dish. Regina (O’Connor’s mother) dozes off, but the rest of us stay up until 1 a.m. discussing Romanticism-versus-Realism, satire, empathy, and consubstantiation-versus-transubstantiation-versus-“doing this in remembrance of Me.” No one changes their mind about the Lord’s Supper, but O’Connor leaves with a new short story idea. [This conversation was first published at MillersBookReview.com, where Joel J. Miller publishes essays, reviews, and other bookish diversions.]

Most people have a secret dream, a far-fetched vision that they keep tucked away in a hidden room in their hearts. Some may long to be famous singers. Others might long to travel around the world or to be the monarch of an important nation. Fame, money, power—these all are rolled into one in my ridiculous fantasy. If you were to catch me in reverie, I would most likely be planning and organizing The Square Halo Museum—a beautiful collection of contemporary art inspired by the Christian faith. In 2013 my good friend Dr. Robert Bigley was tasked with starting a performing arts center in our city, in the empty husk of the Lancaster Trust Company.1 He said to me, “I can’t give you a museum, but how would you like to have an art gallery?” I must have confessed my vision for The Square Halo Museum to him one night over a bottle of wine with our wives. Regardless of how he found out, I lost no time in giving him my reply: I immediately accepted his offer, and my first exhibition of art went up even before the doors to the rest of The Trust Performing Arts Center2 had opened. The inaugural show of the Square Halo Gallery featured art by a number of the artists from It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. Since then, I have averaged a new show every other month, showcasing a wide variety of artists—both living and dead, famous and should-be-famous.3 Square Halo Gallery is in the middle of downtown Lancaster and in the middle of the arts district—a block from “Gallery Row” and The Fulton Opera House.4 Over time, I found that the gallery was also in the middle of an aesthetic and theological no-man’s-land. Of the Christians who entered the gallery, assuming it was a “safe” place for their tribe, many found that the art they considered “too modern” made them uncomfortable. And of the non-Christians who came in believing that the gallery—like any other downtown art gallery—was a “safe” place for their tribe, many were made uncomfortable by art they considered “too religious.” This led me to eventually realize that my role as a curator and gallery director is actually that of a translator—explaining contemporary art to the church, and explaining the Christian faith to the unchurched. I have come to appreciate that the calling of the Square Halo Gallery is to be neither a fancy museum nor a cooler-than-thou moneymaking gallery but to be a place to educate and beautify the city for God. The apostle John also had a dream, a far-fetched vision we now call the Book of Revelation. In it, he saw a glorious New Creation and the city of God that defies description. That city has been the plan since the beginning. When God gave mankind the cultural mandate at the dawn of time, He was calling us to be city builders. “Cities are the ‘culture-forming wombs’ of the society, made by God to be so.”5 Cities are places for building, making, and growing. In cities, people come to work together, live together, and blossom together. Business, justice, science, architecture, and the arts find a place to grow in these “wombs of society.” Aesthetician Calvin Seerveld says, The reach of God’s rule, the city of God—Augustine’s civitas Dei— involves government, commerce, education, media, families, transportation, hospitals, organized sports, centers of art—all societal institutions. God’s city is the place where God’s will is to be done and cultivated as a tangible signpost on earth of the rule of God currently in place at God’s throne, which sinless “city of God” Jesus will bring fully to earth at the end.6 Seerveld has also observed that the biblical vision of the city of God is distinct from but related to the church, therefore charting “a wide open terrain for Christians in the visual arts. This biblical perspective helps prevent us from assuming ‘church art’ or ‘liturgical art’ is the primary model for Christians in the visual arts.”7 Should Christians be involved in growing cities? Tim Keller says that the “single most effective way for Christians to ‘reach’ the US would be for 25% of them to move to two or three of the largest cities and stay there for three generations.”8 In fact, Keller insists that “We can’t not be involved in shaping culture.”9 If this is so, what vision could we embrace to help us work towards cultural transformation? Keller writes: For a possible model, think about the monks in the Middle Ages, who moved out through pagan Europe, inventing and establishing academies, universities, and hospitals. They transformed local economies and cared for the weak through these new institutions. They didn’t set out to take control of a pagan culture. They let the gospel change how they did their work—which meant they worked for others rather than for themselves. Christians today should strive to be a community that lives out this same kind of dynamic, which will bring the same kind of result.10 Before founding the Square Halo Gallery I tried to follow the model of the monks and set up a gallery in the narthex of our church. Our congregation included an unusual number of artists for a Presbyterian church at that time, but that venture only lasted for several shows—it was closed down after some members told the leadership that they wanted to go to church, “not to an art museum.” My brothers and sisters did not understand that our calling to creativity was woven into our DNA in the Garden of Eden. This was disheartening, but it helped to prepare me for the educational aspect of the Square Halo Gallery’s calling to the city for God. Therefore, much of the work I do is to communicate to the church that “being made in God’s image means—it must mean—that human beings reflect in some way God’s creative work.”11 I find myself frequently reminding them that the first record of God filling a human with His Spirit is when the artist Bezalel is set apart for artmaking. (Ex. 31:1–6) Often I need to repeat Leland Ryken’s affirmation that the “Bible endorses the arts . . . [and] there is no prescribed style or content for art. God-glorifying art can be realistic or fantastic, representational or symbolic or abstract.”12 But the educational calling of my gallery occurs at both ends of the spectrum. For example, I have had visitors come into the gallery and ask “Why does that man have holes in his hands and feet?”—demonstrating the illiteracy of my community concerning even the basics of the gospel. And even the most rudimentary of Sunday School stories—Noah’s Ark, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, and Jonah and the Great Fish—are unknown to many who step through our doors on a First Friday. One of the earliest titles from Square Halo Books is It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, a book I contributed to and edited. Over the years I have found that, if by chance someone has heard of the book, it is usually because they read a quote from it by Tim Keller. In his essay for It Was Good, he asserts that Christianity needs artists because “we can’t understand truth without art.”13 The transcendentals of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty are so organically intertwined with one another that to we need beauty to pull truth from our heads to our hearts. Keller wrote that Art is a natural vehicle for pouring out the praise we long to give God. Without art, it is almost impossible to praise God because we have no means by which to get the praise out. We can’t enjoy God without art. And even those of us who are terrible artists have to sing sometimes.14 And so, as my gallery has grown, a calling equal—if not greater—to that of education has emerged: that of getting God’s praise out through beauty. It has been a delight to watch parched souls come in and drink with wonder (and amazement) from the wells of beauty they have found in the iridescent paintings of Makoto Fujimura, the gilded drawings of Sandra Bowden, the exotic prints of Sadao Watanabe, the scrumptious collages of Mary McCleary, and more. Real, honest beauty is such a rare thing in our society that to see it in person often produces a profound, indescribable experience in the hearts of my gallery’s guests. The impact beauty has on people is not a rare or debatable phenomenon. We are not surprised when people are moved beyond words by the sight of the mysterious Giant’s Causeway, the majestic California Redwoods trees, the epic Grand Canyon, the lush Great Reef, or the massive Uluru. In fact, entire industries have grown up to take us to visit them. But because art is man-made, the visceral reaction it can generate often catches us off guard. We need not be flabbergasted, for “At its best, art is able to . . . satisfy our deep longing for beauty and communicate profound spiritual, intellectual, and emotional truth about the world that God has made for his glory.”15 When we are swept up into the glory of natural or man-made beauty, we are, in a sense, returning to the creation of our entire reality that is described in Genesis. For, as poet Malcolm Guite reminds us, “at every moment in which we are conscious and perceive God’s world, God is in that same moment creating it.”16 Every human has been made in the image of God; we are by design creative beings. The artmaking of both the atheist and the follower of Christ is worth considering as praiseworthy because “all art and all creativity declares His glory, even apart from the content or the intent of the artist. As Author and Originator of all creativity, His signature is written on the creative act itself.”17 Of course, Paul wrote, “test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21), and the apologist Francis Schaeffer warned that “not every creation is great art . . . So, while creativity is a good thing in itself, it does not mean that everything that comes out of man’s creativity is good.”18 That caveat for our fallen nature acknowledged, it is important that we seek out and encourage “artists to stimulate that imagination and to show us that things have meaning,” as Keller writes, because “Artists have a special capacity to recognize the ‘other country’ and communicate with the rest of us regarding the greater reality. A good artist will reveal something about the greater reality in an indefinable but inescapable way.”19 Calvin Seerveld explains some of how this is when he writes that God’s Spirit calls an artist to help her neighbors who are imaginatively handicapped, who do not notice the fifteen different hues of green outside the window, who have never sensed the bravery in bashfulness or seen how lovely an ugly person can be—to open up such neighbors to the wonder of God’s creatures, their historical misery and glory.20 I love the work of education and beautification the Square Halo Gallery does for the good of our city and the glory of God, and I still have a dream of seeing it become a full museum. But I have an even more glorious vision now—to see artists who follow Jesus be inspired by the creeds of His church and anchored in the strange and glorious Story our Creator is spinning. I long to see artists who, like Bezalel, are highly skilled and filled with the Spirit of God, making imaginative art that “goes beyond what we can think of and rises to lofty heights where it contemplates the glory of God.”21 This essay originally appeared in Ordinary Saints from Square Halo Books. ENDNOTES 1 In 1912, Lancaster’s largest bank, the Lancaster Trust Company, finished construction on its new downtown headquarters. Sparing no expense in the process, the Lancaster Trust Company built one of the region’s most stunning buildings, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece from the imagination of Lancaster’s leading architect, C. Emlen Urban. A century later, Mr. Urban’s architectural treasure was re-imagined as The Trust Performing Arts Center. 2 In 2013 The Trust Performing Arts Center (https://www.lancastertrust.com) was established to honor God by encouraging excellence in the work of student and professional artists and by enriching our community through inspiring, challenging, and redemptive experiences. “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness” (Ps. 37:3). 3 Some of the artists I have had the honor to feature in my gallery include Mary McCleary, Sandra Bowden, Guy Chase, Marc Chagall, Matthew Clark, Ruth Naomi Floyd, Makoto Fujimura, Daniel Finch, Jimmy Abegg, Mark Potter, Ryan Stander, Sadao Watanabe, Caleb Stoltzfus, Christine and Donald Forsythe, Wayne Adams, Steve Prince, Najwan Sack, Stephanie Lael Barrick, Brent Good, Craig Hawkins, Matt Stemler, Edward Knippers, and Georges Rouault. To learn more, visit https://www. squarehalobooks.com/sq-gallery/. 4 The Fulton Opera House, also known as the Fulton Theatre or simply The Fulton, is said to be the oldest working theatre in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. 5 Timothy Keller, “A Theology of Cities,” CruPress Green, accessed January 15, 2022, https://www.cru.org/ content/dam/cru/legacy/2012/02/A_Theology_of_Cities.pdf. 6 Calvin Seerveld, “Helping Your Neighbor See Surprises: Advice to Recent Graduates,” from Contemporary Art and the Church: A Conversation Between Two Worlds, ed. W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 213. 7 Ibid. 8 Keller, “A Theology of Cities.” 9 Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), Chapter 26. 10 Ibid. 11 Paul Buckley, “Genesis 1 and the Pattern of Our Lives” (sermon), October 20, 2019, Wheatland Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, PA. 12 Leland Ryken, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly About the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1989), 62. 13 Tim Keller, “Why the Church Needs Artists,” from It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, ed. Ned Bustard (Baltimore, MD: Square Halo Books, 2007), 121. 14 Ibid. 15 Philip Graham Ryken, Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 8. 16 Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God (Baltimore, MD: Square Halo Books, 2021), 56. 17 Stephen Roach with Ned Bustard, Naming the Animals: An Invitation to Creativity (Baltimore, MD: Square Halo Books, 2020), 10. 18 Schaeffer, Francis A., p.52 19 Keller, “Why the Church Needs Artists,” It Was Good, 120. 20 Seerveld, “Helping Your Neighbor,” 211. 21 Keller, “Why the Church Needs Artists,” It Was Good, 120.

What is Housemoot? Every October, the Rabbit Room hosts a conference called Hutchmoot. It’s an opportunity for people from far and wide to gather in Nashville to celebrate art, music, story, and faith. This year we are also offering Housemoot, a “Hutchmoot kit” that you can use to create a “moot” experience of your own during the weekend of Hutchmoot (October 5-8). We are offering these resources to be a gathering point for your community. Housemoot is a collection of some of our favorite lectures, concerts, and activities that you can use to connect with people in your own communities. What to Expect The main Housemoot site will open on September 18, with hopes that will give you enough time to plan a local gathering to coincide with Hutchmoot on the weekend of October 5-8. Members and ticket-holders will have access to Housemoot through November. On the Housemoot site, you’ll find over 15 hours of lectures and artistic interludes in three categories: Art & Artists Bible & Theology Hospitality & Community You’ll get access to a curated collection of pre-recorded lectures from some of our favorite writers, artists, theologians, and musicians including Makoto Fujimura (via Trinity Forum), Russell Moore, Karen Swallow Prior (via Trinity Forum), Andrew Peterson, Tim Mackie, Ruth Naomi Floyd, Doug McKelvey (via Anselm Society), Malcolm Guite, and others. Using the Resources to Build a Pop-up Gathering With Your Community This is not your normal web conference. We would like to challenge you to use Housemoot as a “gathering point” for your community (no matter the size). That is why Housemoot is more than lectures. We have included recipes, art, and a gathering guide with practical tips on how to open your home during the event. In short, you can make Housemoot whatever you want it to be. You can pick a single lecture to watch and discuss with your friends over a meal. You could make a day of it, watching several videos and letting the ideas wash over your community. Or you could use Housemoot as a way to build your own weekend conference, gathering friends and neighbors to engage with the content in an even deeper way. As a part of Housemoot, you’ll get: Access to 18 lectures and videos (over 15 hours worth). Three beautiful “artistic interludes” comprised of songs, poems, and a bit of humor. A Gathering Guide with information on how to prepare to open your home during Housemoot. Buying a Ticket or Becoming a Member There are two ways to join Housemoot, buying a ticket or becoming a Rabbit Room member. Tickets cost: $19 per person $29 for a family and friends (5-10) $49 for a group (10+) $99 for churches and large-group gatherings (50+) Instead of Buying a Ticket, Join the Rabbit Room Membership Because our Rabbit Room members are at the heart of funding all our programs and resources, members can access Housemoot at the group level at no additional cost (a $49 value). If you’re interested in supporting the work of the Rabbit Room and receiving any of the benefits below, join the membership now. In addition to accessing Housemoot 2023, members receive quarterly gifts like our annual mug, early access to courses and lectures, monthly updates with backstage looks, and other goodies and experiences. If you choose to opt into the membership instead of buying a ticket to Housemoot, we’ll send you the password for the Housemoot site and everything you need to join the Housemoot experience when you join.

Didn’t get Hutchmoot tickets this year? Ever found yourself dreaming about starting your own “rabbity” gathering, but feeling like it is beyond your ability? Amy Jo Stimson and Steph Ebert discuss their experience creating an in-person gathering called a “Mini-moot” in their small town of Hilton, South Africa. In the following conversation, they share their introduction to Hutchmoot, their experiences with the virtual conference during the global pandemic, and what it took to get their gathering off of the ground in 2022. Stephanie Ebert: Wendell Berry, in Hannah Coulter, shares the famous line, “You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.’ I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.” Berry is constantly calling us to dig into the present: to the local community right where we are, to these bodies, these hands, this place. Sometimes, as a dreamer and a wisher, and an art-maker, this can be difficult. I think back to places I’ve lived and communities I have been a part of: late-night conversations about philosophy until 2 am in college, being knee to knee with fellow pilgrims on El Camino De Santiago in Spain, passing the wine bottles down the table and laughing at the stories and challenges of the day, or that one time I went to Oxford for a few weeks and got to read Victorian Children’s Literature. Amy Jo Stimson: When beginning our Mini-moot journey last year, there was a significant amount that we didn’t know. We knew we wanted to have a day of community and discussion. We had a lot of ideas of how our conference/not-conference should not function: hollow and pale in its mimicry of other greater gatherings. Somehow, we wanted lived-in, dirt-under-your-fingernails, fresh, warm… vibes? A gathering. And whoever came, came, and would be welcome. As it was for Berry, it’s about beginning with the right instructions. Stephanie: Exactly. Where I live now doesn’t have the gleam and glamour of such romantic possibilities as Oxford and the Camino. I feel the hard, practical edges of limits. Limits on my energy, now that I have two children. Limits on my time. I am not gathered with people from all around the world around some fascinating idea, I’m kind of just stuck in a small town with people who have grown up here their whole lives. (A beautiful town, of course, to anyone else.) It can be lonely, sometimes. After feeling so isolated, my soul lacked deep, rich conversations with like-minded people about beauty, art, and faith, and the diversity of artists and thinkers at Hutchmoot was a breath of fresh air. Amy Jo Stimson Amy: When you don’t live in Western/Euro-centric cultural hubs, many experiences take on a fairy-tale hue. It’s what you get “Over There,” always at one remove (usually many more). A few writers had recommended Andrew Peterson’s music to me about the same time as I heard mention of this conference in Nashville that brought together creatives of all kinds in a glorious, soul-nourishing weekend that was so intentional about building community that attendance was deliberately limited and highly sought after. Stephanie: We each found an online community through reading articles on the Rabbit Room. Realizing that they had an in-person event where these conversations would happen in real-time (With music! And food! And guest artist speakers!) was so exciting for me, but we could never consider attending all the way here in South Africa. So when Hutchmoot went online during the pandemic, it was a gift of grace. After feeling so isolated, my soul lacked deep, rich conversations with like-minded people about beauty, art, and faith, and the diversity of artists and thinkers at Hutchmoot was a breath of fresh air. Amy: For me, it was the thrill of finding my community, of inspiration, of home for every creative impulse, zinging through my heart at all times. Stephanie: The following year, Amy and I managed to recruit a group to enjoy the sessions together. We camped out at someone’s house, had a fire going, and shared thoughts late into the night. We couldn’t wait to do it the following year. I wasn’t magically transported to a cosmopolitan city brimming with museums and symphonies, of course, but even within the small edges of our little town, God pulled together the eight of us to share artists and stories and thoughts and exclaim in a Lewisian way, “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” Amy: Hutchmoot, the highly sought-after, limited-attendee conference for theists and artists in the States (that I would probably never get to in real life), became a 2000-member-strong virtual and spiritual gift. So it was something of a loss when the focus shifted back to an in-person event, as it should. The 2022 idea Amy: Community is important. Even streaming the content and sharing the meals (and kazoo symphonies) in group-viewing weekends could not replace it. In 2022, when discussing what to do with those yearnings, Steph and I discussed several options. We could host a weekend in which we streamed previous content from the Rabbit Room resource banks on their website, podcasts, and Spotify, until one of us said, “Unless we make our own…?” And that’s what started it. Stephanie: There were a few things that came together to make this happen. Some things had changed in the course of that year. One is that my husband and I now owned about 3 acres of land, with a large-ish house called Windhover. Rather than escaping to new, far-flung adventures, we were trying to answer God’s call to be present, to be neighbors, right where we were. There was a lot that went into this: our property is situated on a fault line between two very segregated communities, and we dreamed of Windhover being a place of peace and hospitality for our neighbors on all sides. There were practical ideas of what we should do with the space—job creation, small-scale farming, affordable housing—but the one longing I had (which sometimes feels a bit frivolous in the face of such dire economic needs around us) was that it would also be a gathering place of beauty. I kept dropping hints that Amy should turn our house into a North Wind Manor and host gatherings and symposiums there. Since she has her PhD in Literature (in Tolkien studies, no less!) she is more than qualified. So, when Hutchmoot online was canceled, we looked at each other, and she took up the mantle. Amy: We took up the mantle. We began by prayerfully pooling our resources. Who did we know? What could we do? What did we have already? Steph had some knowledge of events, and I had only post-grad conference experience. There were logistical things that had to happen, and the possibility of scheduled power outages on the day to contend with. And then there was the challenge of trying to explain what this gathering was. A gathering like this is quite a “taste and see” experience. It wasn’t testimonies or worship songs (though nothing wrong with either). We looked around the room and saw that our local community was rich in these things. Stephanie Ebert Stephanie: We were looking for artists and thinkers and makers who wanted to share about this intersection of faith, art, and community. We emailed out a very specific invitation to people we thought might have thoughts to share, in which we quoted Hopkins and Lewis. We linked The Rabbit Room and Hutchmoot as inspiration and hoped people would go for it. Amy: It often astounds me how God answers the prayers we haven’t even thought to pray. As we sat to brainstorm with our acquaintances the people likely to take on our vision, it turned out we were sitting on a goldmine of talent and passion. Most speakers were personal friends (many even Masters and Doctoral graduates), thrilled to have a chance to share something they were passionate about integrated with a Christian worldview—from creation care and conservation to culture and anthropology, and place-making. I had to repent of my small thinking; this is a small town, things don’t land here. It is a small town, and there is very little happening that makes it a viable place for a Mini-moot of this kind. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t value hiding always just a little beneath the surface. Stephanie: We met for a prequel event on a Friday night and watched and discussed a short film. On Saturday, friends filled the spaces as the program made its way through talks, choirs, gardens, and dancing. We had a few local visual artists display their work. We looked around the room and saw that our local community was rich in these things. We didn’t have an Oxford pub, but we had students from the Bible College next door teach us about traditional forms of Zulu song and dance as incorporated into worship. We had avocado sandwiches at lunch with bread from a local bakery and avos picked from Windhover’s trees. We weren’t a huge bunch, but once we moved out our furniture, we were able to fit the 40 or so people who attended in our living room. It was life-giving and inspiring. Amy: When we asked our attendees to fill in a survey for a little feedback, the one thing each had in common was, “I hope this is going to be a yearly event?” Yes, it is amazing how much logistical effort just offering tea for 40 people can be. But in so many ways, this event was its own simplest, sweetest reward. I’ve had to recant my small-town thinking: the this-won’t-work, I’m-in-the-wrong-space-and-I’m-the-wrong-person mentality. It’s no Gideon and an army of three hundred, or the feeding of the five thousand. But God can do much with only the little that you have when you give it to his use. “I am not all the way capable of so much,” said Berry, “but those are the right instructions.” A Mini-moot DIY kit Here are some things we learned in our first Mini-moot: You don’t have to start big. We decided Windhover would host the event, and in case of rain, we had to limit the numbers to those we could fit inside our house! When we advertised, we told people we only had 50 tickets available. In the end, we didn’t have to turn anyone away, but starting small meant that the logistics were all much easier. Forty people are still enough to make something an “event”. Advertising and Registration: We used Canva to create a poster advertising our event, and shared it on our personal social media networks. We had a hashtag, but we didn’t have our own social media pages or website. We looked into using something like Eventbrite for tickets, but in the end, we went with a Google form for registration, with a link to an attached PDF that had instructions for the day, an outline of the speakers/program, etc. It worked just fine. Money. This was complicated as we are not some massive nonprofit. We were not paying any of our speakers, and the location was free, so the overhead costs were minimal. South Africa has massive economic inequality, and (in the spirit of Hutchmoot) we wanted to make sure the table was open to all, so we put a suggested donation price of R50 and asked people to bring cash on the day, along with “something to put on bread” for lunch and a “bring your own mug” request. We borrowed sound equipment from a local church. This kept our expenses low: thank-you gifts for speakers, bread from our local bakery, muffins and scones from a neighbor for coffee breaks, disposable plates, tea, coffee, milk, and some basic sandwich fixings. We were nervous about how lunch would go, but people showed up with more than enough “fixings” – from ham and cheese to Camembert. We sliced up the bread and ate lunch picnic potluck style and it was lovely. If we were to have a larger gathering (maybe up to 65 or 100) we could probably do something similar, but if the gathering was exponentially bigger we would need to think of something different. In the end, the money people brought pretty much exactly covered costs. We told people if there was extra, we would save it for next year’s Mini-moot or release it to a local charity. Speakers. We debated “zooming in” some more accomplished, well-known artists from overseas, or even from bigger cities in South Africa, but in the end, we decided to “go local” and embrace the beauty within our own circles. We realized that we collectively know a lot of visual artists—this area hosts an arts festival every year—but we didn’t know enough Christian musicians! Our speakers ended up being a bit more “literature/philosophy/culture” focused (although we did have a conservationist share!), and next year we will try to recruit people earlier for more diversity. But we also think it was good to celebrate who was already in our circles and just hadn’t had a chance to share before. And it was cheap! Breakouts. We had one “prequel” event on Friday evening before the main event on Saturday. The prequel was a smaller gathering, Amy led a discussion of a short story and a short film around brownies and coffee. We would love to do more of this next time—perhaps identify different “host” homes in the area who are willing to host poetry readings or read-aloud one-act plays, or if we could recruit more musicians to do a concert before or after the main event this would be cool! We also want to be more intentional about helping attendees connect next year during the main event. We intentionally tried to invite people from a diversity of cultural backgrounds in our area, and we want to put more thought into how to facilitate rich, meaningful connections around the art and speaker’s themes during the breaks. Perhaps we will have 10 minutes of random “group discussion” time with a question prompt, or some other scaffolding to allow for deeper interactions. Priya Parker’s “The Art of Gathering” is an amazing resource for planning an event like this. Program – Beginnings and Endings. Priya Parker points out that people remember beginnings and endings most clearly. So from the moment people pulled into the driveway, we tried to set the tone. We made extra signage to direct people. We also sent out a “packing list” the night before, to remind people to bring their mugs for coffee and tea, and their picnic potluck lunch item. When people arrived there was tea and a playlist of music from Rabbit Room artists mixed in with South African artists playing in the background. Amy started us with a compelling vision for the day, orienting people to what this was (as for many people this was their first time experiencing something like this), and getting them excited for the day. It’s tempting to start or end an event with “housekeeping”, but we tried to make sure we didn’t start or end with admin, but rather with beauty and wonder. Our finale was a time of corporate singing and dancing, led by students from a neighboring Bible college, which really summed up what the day was all about: the beauty of God across cultures, languages, and art forms, using our bodies to be creative. We had a bonus of swing dancing lessons for those who wanted to stay. So, dear reader, we encourage you to be present in the spaces that God has put you in. Look locally and find you do have a local flavor: this is not a poor man’s copy of an exclusive international event. This is a real embodiment of Christ and his church, and how Christianity looks and feels different in different cultures, and that’s what makes it important and valuable.

Three nuclear explosions blasted across my screen when I went to see Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City several weeks ago. One of them was in Asteroid City itself. Another was in the trailer for Oppenheimer—a movie about the man who invented the atomic bomb, so, it figures. Yet another was in the final shot of the trailer for Dune: Part Two, just as Paul Atreides says, “He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.” In any given year, many movies will rise to prominence as a result of their individual craft or entertainment—and I love obsessively dissecting those movies and enjoying them for what they are on that level. One of the things that causes me to pay close attention every year, though, goes beyond individual artistic merit; instead, it’s about seeing and observing the ways that these movies are all in conversation with each other. And if we believe that artists are some of the closest things that we have to prophets in the modern age, even accidentally, then we should listen closely to what that conversation is about. Asteroid City has a lot going on. It’s easily Wes Anderson’s most metamodern, self-reflective film to date, examining the inherent artifice of art and the way it helps us understand our lives anyway. I don’t really blame the people who didn’t connect with it, but I thought it was a profound enigma. This is ironic, because the movie is very much concerned with enigmas; the plot revolves around the sudden (and extremely brief) appearance of an awkward-looking stop-motion alien in the desert town of Asteroid City, causing everyone to spiral into confusion, hysteria, and existential turmoil shortly thereafter. The atomic tests which can be seen in the distance of Asteroid City, momentarily shaking the buildings but leaving the residents unfazed, feel like an intentional parallel to the alien itself; in the same way that the mysterious appearance of the alien has left everyone with questions about their place in the universe, the advent of atomic weapons during the same time period was causing everyone in the real world to do the same. Of course, it doesn’t take much of a leap to see the ways that Oppenheimer is exploring some similar ideas in a much more literal sense; Nolan’s mythic and singularly-focused biopic examines that cultural moment quite deliberately through the grief and existential turmoil of the man who pioneered it. “You’re the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves,” says Kenneth Brannagh’s Niels Bohr, “and the world is not prepared.” It may seem at first that any story exploring the atomic bomb would be about power, but I think there’s more to it than that. Sure, for the person pressing the button or pulling the trigger, a bomb might be about power, maybe even for some zealous citizens in the nations such powers would benefit. But for most of the ordinary human beings living in an atomic age, perhaps the experience is much closer to that of the alien in Asteroid City: an uneasy enigma. We can’t control it. We don’t know how it will affect us. It might alter everything we think we know about reality, leaving us the slightest bit out of step. It's the lack of clarity or resolution that's so compelling about many of the stories dancing across our movie screens right now. It speaks to the restlessness we've all had these last few years. Houston Coley You’re probably smart enough to see where I’m going with this: if I were to liken the alien and the atomic bomb to any other “entity” causing the same existential turmoil in 2023, the topic of artificial intelligence would be top of mind. Lucky for us, we do not currently find ourselves at a stage where we have to ask questions about sentient computers or robots with feelings, but we are asking questions about the increasing role of AI in our lives—as a tool, a weapon, or an enemy, whether we want it or not. In Asteroid City, a kid on a school field trip writes a (characteristically quirky) country ballad to muse about the arrival of the alien in town; one of the funnier verses asks the alien, “Are you friend or foe…or other?” I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve been asking the same of AI in the last few months. With almost prophetic timing, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One was uniquely positioned last month to address this question quite literally and definitively. The “entity” in Dead Reckoning is a rogue AI that has gained control of every military, defense, and intelligence network in the world. Of course, it started by influencing social media. Where a more indecisive movie may have tried to make nuanced arguments about the way AI could be used for good, Dead Reckoning takes a much bolder approach: it goes all-in on the offensive, with very clear real-life subtext. “This Entity,” says Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in the first 10 minutes, “I mean to kill it.” Despite Ethan’s heroic intentions to destroy The Entity for good by finding the cruciform key that can unlock its source code, every other government wants to eliminate him and get control of the key themselves to use The Entity for their own purposes. Less of the drama in Dead Reckoning is focused on what those governments would actually plan to do with the power of The Entity, though; more of it hinges on the way that this godlike AI uses its digital influence to literally rewrite our characters’ understanding of reality itself, leaving them unsure what’s real and how much choice they have in their fate. The experience is marked with paranoia and uncertainty, not dissimilar from that of the citizens in Asteroid City after they encountered the alien. The timing of a movie about Tom Cruise literally going to war with AI could not be more perfect, especially given the way that AI has taken center stage in the current union strikes, with more than a few studio executives touting generative artificial intelligence as the alternative to raising pay for writers and actors longterm. There was even a report by NPR recently revealing that certain studios have already been including a Black Mirror-esque clause in actor contracts allowing them to scan a performer’s body and face for one day’s pay and use their likeness in perpetuity via AI-aided VFX without ever needing to pay them again—similar to the digital necromancy worked to bring back hollow wax figurine imitations of Christopher Reeve, George Reeves, Adam West, and others in The Flash back in June. These specific examples might feel like minutia, but they’re a daily incarnation of what Bo Burnham managed to accurately describe in his song “That Funny Feeling” back in 2020: the tiniest and silliest changes to ordinary existence that actually reflect major shifts in the grander human experience, leaving everyone slightly off-kilter and unable to pinpoint exactly what feels uneasy. A key part of the strangeness of living in a digital age is knowing that huge, culture-changing things are happening regularly, but on a day-to-day basis, you’ll only ever interact with the comically shallow, consumeristic incarnations of those things. It leaves one with more sympathy for Augie in Asteroid City, melancholically staring out the window after the arrival of the alien and wondering what to make of any of it. Like the atomic bomb, AI has the (theoretical, hypothetical) potential to both save or destroy the world, but it will more likely do neither, leaving us in a perpetual state of disquieted restlessness waiting for the next penny to drop. Of course, there’s another “entity” that has plagued us for the last few years: the pandemic. In fact, I think the restless and disquieted tension these movies capture may have its roots in the shared cultural trauma of quarantine—a time when, much like these other examples, a strange and powerful force entered our universe and left us in an uncertain world feeling helpless and unsure when that force might affect us, too. The undeniable sense of “living through history” was surreal, and the loss of control was palpable. I think that feeling hasn’t faded yet. When I started writing this piece, I was seeking some form of clarity and resolution around why these ideas of aliens, atom bombs, and AI were floating beneath (and above) the surface of so many movies in 2023. I think, however, that it’s actually the lack of clarity or resolution that’s so compelling about many of the stories dancing across our movie screens right now. It speaks to the restlessness we’ve all had these last few years. Is that restlessness all about the new age of AI? Perhaps that’s some part of it. But maybe it’s also a general sign that we’re searching for meaning in a confusing world, marked by issues and enigmas that make us feel entirely out of control, lingering with a strange aftertaste that feels a bit like fallout.

When the hashtag #MeToo began showing up on social media feeds across the country in October 2017, Facebook reported that nearly half of its users were friends with someone who said they’d been sexually assaulted or harassed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised, as I’d already heard stories from two family members who were taken advantage of by close friends. One month later, #ChurchToo began trending on Twitter as users sought to increase awareness of this kind of tragedy happening in churches as well. And in the last six years, multiple stories of abuse have continued to be uncovered in the Christian world as we’ve seen leader after leader weighed on the scales of justice and found wanting. This is why Rachel Wilhelm wrote the song “Vengeance With The Sword,” using images and phrases pulled from the prophet Jeremiah. Rachel has taken it upon herself to stand up for the oppressed and deliver God’s message to leaders who abuse their positions of power, with lyrics like these: You will not be lamented, or gathered, or buried Strewn will be all the bodies, like refuse and carrion. A calamity will rumble  From the wine inside your cup And if you refuse to take it I’ll make you drink it up The song is the sixth track from Rachel’s newest album, Jeremiah, and whenever I listen to it I feel compelled to raise a silent fist in victory. Yes, I think to myself, God does care about justice. “The Old Testament is key to understanding the heart of Jesus,” Rachel told me. “There are a lot of sex abuse cases, clergy mishandling, and unjust power dynamics in the church right now, but something tells me this isn’t new.” “God sees it all, and has already spoken about it,” she added. “But not many listen.” I’ve been in a writer’s group with Rachel for a couple of years now, and when she first shared this song with us last November, I said, “This is the song I needed after I listened to “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast. But in the last month, I’ve discovered that the album in its entirety attempts to fill a serious void found in modern Christian music: songs that express lament and doubt. “You Won’t Turn” starts off the record with some important questions: “Where is the Lord?” not a soul has asked / Not a prophet, shepherd or scribe who studies the law / “Where is the fountain of the Living God?” / They have molded vessels themselves with cracks in the clay.” Such words echo the hearts of many who’ve deconstructed their faith and walked away from organized religion over the last several years. Though I’m still invested in my local church, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t relate to the cry for accountability made in the 14th verse of Jeremiah’s sixth chapter: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious / ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet, but the cover of Rachel’s album shows a young man smiling up at a beautiful sky—a scene that captures the complexity of someone who knows the importance of his calling. She commissioned the painting from Knoxville-based artist Barbara Thomas because she believes in fostering the arts in church. Rachel is also the Vice President for an organization called United Adoration, which has been holding songwriting and visual arts retreats across the US, Europe, South America, and even Africa for the last nine years. She ends the album with the haunting line, “Good Shepherd, break us as you must,” which is a fitting prayer of conclusion because restoration is not possible without repentance. Janna Barber Perhaps my talented friend relates to Jeremiah’s calling as a prophet of woe. Before this album, Rachel released Requiem, an album meant to help people during the pandemic who weren’t allowed to attend the funerals of loved ones they’d lost. Other previous albums like Daughter Zion’s Woe and Songs of Lament touch on similar themes, but Jeremiah feels more multifaceted, offering up songs like “I Know the Plans,” from the most famous verse in Jeremiah (29:11), which sounds a bit like a song The Welcome Wagon would perform. Then there’s “Fear Not For I Am With You,” a tune upbeat and hopeful enough to be played on some Christian radio stations, which ends with the beautiful repetition of God’s encouraging promise: “I’m not finished with you yet.” Earlier this year I told Rachel that her new music was beginning to remind me of Johnny Cash, and she said to me, “God cares for the vulnerable and unnoticed, so I care for the vulnerable and unnoticed. It’s my calling.” Rachel was joined by a host of talented friends in the recording and production of this album. Players like Phil Keaggy, Jered McKenna, and Adam Whipple, along with vocalists Karin Simmons and Devin Pogue. Pogue provides the lead vocal on a few songs, including “Turn to Me,” which contains my favorite line from the album, a promise from the Lord that says: Turn to Me, O turn to me I am merciful and gentle, turn to me.  A day will come when I’ll bring you home And your restless hearts will find shalom. I’ll forgive and I’ll take every disordered ache And I’ll anchor joy within its place Rachel is unflinchingly faithful to the themes of this complex book, penning lyrics like, “How awful that day will be/but on that day you will be saved” for the song “On That Day,” based on Jeremiah 30, which alludes to the coming of Christ. Then she ends the album with the haunting line, “Good Shepherd, break us as you must,” which is a fitting prayer of conclusion because restoration is not possible without repentance. In Jeremiah’s day, the nation of Israel did not have ears to hear his call for repentance, which caused him the terrible kind of suffering and lament that the songs “My Heart is Faint” and “Woe to You O Jerusalem” bear witness to. But what if these lyrics and melodies could be the beginning of something new for today’s churches and leaders? Perhaps Jeremiah’s message will finally be taken to heart, and God’s people will begin to live and love as though the Holy Spirit were near to their hearts, as well as their mouths. May it be so, Lord Jesus. May it be so. Check out the latest album from Rachel Wilhelm here.

I grew up in a Pentecostal tradition that loved to call everything a spirit. If you showed up to church flustered because your kids wouldn’t get out of bed and your car wouldn’t start and you forgot to brush your teeth, they’d cast out the spirit of chaos. If someone had an allergy attack, they’d cast out demons before considering peanuts. If you were a woman with curves, they’d cast out the Jezebel spirit just to be safe. I love my charismatic roots, complicated as they are. They still sprout up from time to time with rich memories or funny stories, like when Sarah Macintosh, Jess Ray, and I were asked to write a song for the Faithful Project based on Psalm 68:4-8. We were drawn to this part: “Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.” When Sarah read it aloud, I was transported back to high school when a youth pastor— you guessed it— cast a spirit out of me. He called it the “orphan spirit” and commanded it to come out in Jesus’ name. I closed my eyes, opened my hands, and repeated the pastor’s words: “I am not abandoned or rejected. I am a child of God.” Now, listen. I wouldn’t recommend this tactic. I don’t endorse the existence of a literal orphan spirit (or spirit of chaos or any other spirit that has been cast out of me). I also know the Psalmist was not thinking of spirits, but actual orphans and widows. I’ll get to that in a minute. But while I can’t attest to the happenings of spiritual realms, I do know what happens in my therapist’s office. There’s this thing therapists use called “Internal Family Systems” (IFS) and the basic idea is that each of us contains a complex system of parts that help us function. Maybe you’ve said something like, “Part of me wants to take the job but another part of me doesn’t.” IFS basically names those parts (Judge, Inner Child, Manager, etc.) in order to help you identify what you need to healthily move forward. I have an orphan part. Maybe you do, too? It’s the part of me that never feels like I belong. It’s the part of me that is convinced nobody else will take care of me so I need to vigilantly look out for myself. That I am not safe. That I’m one step away from being abandoned. That all I have at the end of the day is me. Abiding in God slowly heals the part of me that is convinced I am on the outside; slowly thaws the part of me that has iced over in hyper-vigilance. Savannah Locke In Biblical interpretation studies, there is something called “The Two Horizons” which speaks to the two-fold nature of interpreting a text. One horizon is the text in its unique context; the other horizon is the reader’s own context. The Two Horizons speaks to how readers bring their own contribution to interpreting a text. When I read Psalm 68, one horizon I bring is the orphan part of me which feels abandoned by God. I am struck by the tenderness of God as Father who welcomes me into a holy family with lavish love: “Father of orphans…is God in his holy habitation.” God’s presence is home. Abiding in God slowly heals the part of me that is convinced I am on the outside; slowly thaws the part of me that has iced over in hyper-vigilance. And the horizon of Psalm 68 challenges me to stretch beyond myself. God cares for the orphan part of me, sure, but God also cares for actual orphans. Actual widows. People who are unhoused (vs 6). People who are in prison (vs 6). The nature of God is to protect the vulnerable and free the oppressed. God stands with the powerless. If orphans, widows, the unhoused, and those in prison matter to God, this ought to shape my community and me. James 1:27 puts it this way: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” This is God in his holy habitation, and this is how God’s church operates with sincerity in the world—by giving orphans families and supporting widows and housing the unhoused and loving those in prison. How do we, as individuals and communities, practice this type of religion? It seems to me, that is where the beautiful act of discernment begins. Who are the orphans in your vicinity? The widows? The unhoused? Those in prison? How might God be leading you and your community to be evidence of the Good News towards them? And maybe, in the same breath, you need to hear the Good News for your own heart? That you belong to God. That you are not rejected. That God is your provider. That there is enough. That there is a place for you filled to the brim with the loving presence of God. Sarah, Jess, and I wrote a song called “A Place For You” for anyone who has been orphaned or widowed— literally or not. I hope it meets the horizon of your life and encourages you to bask in the vast warmth of God’s holy presence.

We love to shine the spotlight on friends who are crafting something meaningful, and Matt Wheeler’s new album certainly fits that bill. Matt is a friend of the Rabbit Room who is also a singer-songwriter from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, an artist who often leans on literary heroes for his musical inspiration. A Hard History of Love is his new project, a suite of songs and stories inspired by the short stories of Wendell Berry. Read on for our conversation about his love of Berry, the vision for his newest work, and the upside of creative limitations. Rabbit Room: I want to ask all about the new project, but even you define your own angle, so to speak, as a musician whose specialty is works based on classic literature. Can we begin at the point where you knew that was “your thing”? Matt Wheeler: I tend to like to read the books that you’re assigned to read in school. On my first few album projects, I wrote a song here or there that was based on a classic work of literature—two songs based on Les Miserables, one based on The Old Man & The Sea, a sea shanty loosely based on The Odyssey, a re-telling of an account from the Gospel of John, and numerous references to well-known writings embedded in songs. But where it crystallized into being “my move”, so to speak, was in late 2019 or early 2020, after Chris Hoisington from Old Bear Studio—and, more recently, the Rich Mullins tribute project Bellsburg Sessions—reached out to me about working together. Conversations surfaced two main themes: first, the idea of an album where all of the songs are based on stories from literature, and second, spoken essay pieces that would be a cross between stage banter and audiobook narration. The result is my 2021 album, Wonder of It All, based on books like The Horse & His Boy and Watership Down. It didn’t hurt that, at the same time as those conversations, I was also getting to know The Rabbit Room community through The RR Chinwag Facebook group. That helped shape some of the story selections, like the inclusion of The Hobbit, a book I hadn’t read before that. That album helped me find that literary niche. Some other songwriters lean into that type of narrative folk. Sarah Sparks and her work with Narnia stories comes to mind, but not many that I know of. I’ve found that it is a great fit for me, not only because I’m an avid reader, but because it sets me apart in ways that strictly autobiographical songwriting wouldn’t—or hadn’t. And “I’m a songwriter specializing in songs based on classic works of literature” makes a better elevator pitch than that, too. Also, I’m a husband, a special-needs father, and a full-time college employee, so I find that having something specific to write about—sort of a writing prompt and angle—is very helpful for focusing my creativity in the somewhat limited time I can put toward songwriting. I’m aiming to write songs that are good art, even if the listener doesn’t already know the literary source material, but that is also that much richer for those who do. How’d you decide upon Wendell Berry as inspiration for this project? When it came time to think about what my next project after Wonder of It All would be, I was leaning toward another album with a literary concept. I felt led to write about Wendell Berry’s work. And it may be more accurate to say that when the idea dawned on me, it felt like it had been staring me right in the face. From that point, I was pondering the project referencing Berry’s Port William fiction, his poetry, and also his essays. I was talking with my friend Ned Bustard at his Square Halo Gallery about what may be next and when I told him my ideas thus far, he suggested choosing a few short stories from the That Distant Land short story collection. With that refined focus, I was off and running. I was introduced to Berry’s work through the songwriting of Jacob Zachary back when I was in college in Virginia. Years later, around the time my son was born, I was laid off from my job, and I decided to pick up Berry’s short story collection, The Wild Birds. I was hooked. I proceeded to check out almost every fiction work by Berry that my local library system had. In his Port William fiction, Berry invites his readers into a rich community, a fictionalized version of the rural community where he grew up and still lives & farms in Henry County, Kentucky. Each story is a portrait of people who belong to each other and to their place. Berry has a way of winsomely portraying the complex, the mundane, and the sacred in the characters he writes. Berry dignifies good work, genuine love for God by loving one’s neighbor, and a right relationship with land and place. There’s just something that Berry can convey about what it means to be human that I’ve found few writers can match. Among my favorite aspects of Berry’s Port William fiction is the fact that he has been writing about the same community since 1960’s Nathan Coulter and as recently as 2022—Berry turned 89 in August and released two new books last year!—and that there is such continuity. The stories are set in a wide variety of years, from the 19th century to the 2020s, and yet the stories all form a coherent whole. Imagine being able to do that over six decades. And characters who are main figures in one story may be a supporting cast in another, or we may see a character who is a 5-year-old in one story appear as an old man in another, so you get a multifaceted view of them. I’m not into superhero movies, but I imagine the appeal is a bit like that of the Marvel Comics Universe. There's just something that Berry can convey about what it means to be human that I've found few writers can match. Matt Wheeler Simply put, Berry is my favorite living author, and his stories are so striking and vivid that they are fertile ground to inspire music. I’d love to have you clarify the nature of the project for us, because this one comes with some writing of your own, right? Yes. Alongside the songs are spoken pieces I wrote that have original music compositions backing them. Four of them are essays—fitting, as Berry is also an essayist—and each serves as a prelude for the song that follows. And there is an original poem titled “Gleanings” that follows the last song. I wrote “Gleanings” in March 2023, during the week of the recording sessions with Old Bear Studios, and many of the words and ideas came from looking back at free-writings that I did a few years ago when I was reading through Berry’s collected poems. The intended effect of this combination is something more like a concert experience than a standard album. You’re more likely to care about characters in a song or a book or a movie if you’ve gotten to get to know them a bit, and I hope that listeners feel that much more welcomed into the listening experience through the songs-and-stories approach—a little like my favorite type of music bookings to play, house concerts. Does that make this whole creative experience more fulfilling or more challenging or both? Limitations can actually be freeing. When I know that I’ll be writing about this specific moment in the lives of these particular people in this distinct place, it narrows my focus. And the short stories that I’m working with here are writing that I genuinely find brilliant, so it’s fulfilling to be able to translate what I find so moving about it from prose into songs, essays, and poetry. It’s a chance to share work I love with listeners in a way that may be their introduction to it, or that may serve to deepen their appreciation of it. So I find the creative experience of this way of writing and presenting the work very fulfilling, and that any challenges in it only serve to make the work stronger. Has this deepened your own love for Berry’s work? Certainly. I’ve heard Malcolm Guite speak of his literary influences as essentially his mentors, even those he doesn’t or didn’t know personally, and I resonate with that. There is a sense in which you get to know an author whose work you have read extensively—granted, a one-sided relationship, but it can still be a sort of apprenticeship. Wendell Berry has shaped my own sensibilities about faith, life, place, and art, much as C.S. Lewis has. Reading the short stories and understanding them deeply enough to write convincingly from the perspective of the characters has deepened my affection for them and for Berry’s work, much like getting to know a person’s story over time can have that effect. Check out Matt Wheeler’s new Kickstarter campaign for A Hard History of Love.

Earlier this year, I read and loved Dawn Morrow’s poetry book The Habit of Hope. The poems are profound and honest in a way that’s easily accessible—Dawn writes “for people who don’t like poetry.” The collection weaves together poems about family and growing from childhood to adulthood. The refrain throughout the book is hope, but the poems never shy away from the reality of suffering. I was excited to speak to Dawn about the collection, her writing process, and practicing hope amidst despair. I called her during the delightful juxtaposition that is her evening commute, beginning at FBI Headquarters (where she runs all of the medical and psychological services at the FBI) and ending at a dance studio (where she takes lessons at West Coast Swing). Caitlin Coats: I love that you say that you write poems for people who think they don’t like poetry. How does that guide or inform the kinds of poems that you write? Does it change anything at all, or does that kind of come naturally? Dawn Morrow: I think it comes naturally because that was me for a long time. If you’d asked me eight or nine years ago if I liked poetry, I would have been like, “Absolutely not.” I still remember reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and I wanted to die twice. It was terrible. I thought poetry was all of these secrets. I thought you had to have secret knowledge to understand what was going on, so I was out on poetry. And that’s really because of the canon that we teach high schoolers. At least when I was in high school, it was all the classic canon. Very few women. Very few people of color. Very little contemporary stuff. So that was my understanding of the world of poetry. That was true, until I heard Andrew Peterson during a Hutchmoot seminar read “Adam’s Choice” by Jeanne Murray Walker. And I was like, “I love that, and also, I could have written that.” I’d written some poems before, but I wouldn’t have called myself a poet. That was the first time when I heard something that sounded like my own writing voice in a poem. So that really shaped the way I write poems. I'm super interested in those liminal spaces and those thresholds between the dark and the turning point of the story. All of that informed what I was writing toward—how I’ve thought about hope, and how I’ve written about hope. Dawn Morrow A lot of times when I’m writing, I think of an old boss I had here who’s a law enforcement officer. And when she had a bad day, she would text me and say, “Send me a poem.” So I always wrote with her in mind. The Habit of Hope. How did you land on that title? It’s a great title for a poetry collection. I’m curious if there’s a story behind it, or if you just found that after you had finished the poems that title felt right. My book actually started out as my grad school thesis, and it was titled Family Stories. My intention was to tell the stories of my family, and then 2020 happened. As I was turning out a lot of work for this book, I was in the middle of DC as COVID was happening. I was in the middle of all the protests. I was in the middle of all the January 6th stuff, and all the stuff that happened coming up around the election. And I was living in the second perimeter, which meant you couldn’t enter where I live without credentials of some sort that said you should be there. It was crazy. So I started writing a little bit broader across the spectrum. In my book, there are not overtly COVID poems but definitely ones that were colored by that time. There are overtly protest poems in there. One is called “June 1 2020.” And that’s part of the change of the tenor of the book. At some point, I realized there was a kind of pulse through the book where I would have a lot of darker poems, and then there would be this kind of bright spot. So it felt to me like hope was the heartbeat of the collection. That’s kind of where the title came from. I love the idea of practicing hope—that it is something we return to in a focused, determined, disciplined way. What does practicing hope look like to you? Is part of that writing poetry? It is, but I think it’s more about being able to tell our story. And I think it’s revisiting the places where God showed up—where there is that bright spot in the midst of all this darkness. Those are my favorite parts of the Bible. I’m super interested in those liminal spaces and those thresholds between the dark and the turning point of the story. All of that informed what I was writing toward—how I’ve thought about hope, and how I’ve written about hope. There are a lot of dark and vulnerable moments in your collection. As a reader, it was a gift to read these moments that are dark and painful, but honest. But I can imagine that as the writer of these really vulnerable poems, that might be a different experience. So I’m curious, how was that experience of sharing the dark moments? Was it ever a question of how much to put in these poems? A couple of the poems even seem to touch on that experience of writing and figuring out how much to share when your emotions are fresh. The poetry isn’t necessarily nonfiction. While a lot of my stuff is either biographical or kind of rooted in some part of my story, it’s not always fully true. Some of it is other people’s stories that I heard and wove together. Some of it feels a little bit more personal than it is. That being said, there are a lot of personal stories in there that are exactly out of my experience. So there’s one that talks about Christmas and my mother dying a little more every day. And that story is fully autobiographical, down to decorating the Christmas tree that sat next to her as she died. So I think for every story that’s an amalgamation of other people’s stuff, there’s one or two that are really mine. But sharing those moments never bothered me. I kind of removed myself from that until I published the book because I never thought people would read this book. Until my boss’s boss came up to me, and he was like, “Hey, I read your book. It’s great.” And I thought, “Oh, wow, I feel really awkward now.” There are people that I work with now and that I’ve worked with before that have all read my book. And that turns out to be weirder than I thought it would be. You get used to it after a while. And I chose to put those poems in the book, knowing they would be read. I think I just didn’t think about that in real life, what that would be like. So it got a little awkward. Now I’m kind of over it because it’s out there now. I also had readers who got the first copies of the book before it was really on sale. So that helped to ease into it. Pete [Peterson] and Jennifer [Trafton] actually, were some of my first readers. And they both called and texted with these super encouraging messages. It made it worth the cost of putting myself out there. Going back to that idea of hope. I’m curious if you chose to include those dark moments as a way to bring about more opportunities to encounter hope. That was my experience of reading, so I’m curious if that was intentional. I don’t know. I think a lot of things in poetry are happy accidents. I see where you get it, but I didn’t mean to do that. It was just accidental. That was something that turned into something else, but I think that’s what poetry does. I think every dark poem in that collection is a message that says you’re not alone. In every part of your story, you’re not alone. You’re not the only one out there, and I don’t think we tell those stories enough. I think we love to live in this happy, whitewashed Instagram life—especially as the church—and we don’t tell those stories. A lot of times we tell stories that end happily ever after, and the reality is that most of us are in the middle of the story. So I think every story or poem that I have is an invitation to hope. It means that you’re not alone. That’s all I want is for a poem to tell me that I’m not alone, and your poems definitely do that for me. They’re really, really beautiful. This could be a stressful question, but do you have any other projects in the works? I do! I actually have another poetry book in the works. The working title is Dancing Lessons. It’ll probably change three times before I get to the end, but that’s kind of the working title. This last book was a lot about disconnection and figuring out where you fit. The next book will be the opposite of that, so it’s about embodiment and connection. Which is also the power behind partner dance, which is what I do. My dancing teacher tends to say things like, “You just need to dance your own dance.” And I’m like, “Hey that’s a little too close! Get out of my soul!” There’s a whole series of poems right there. 2025 is probably when those will come out, if I pick up my writing speed. You can order a copy of The Habit of Hope from the Rabbit Room store now.

I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s The Sign of Jonas lately, while I watch my daughter take gymnastics. The room is a cavernous space, ceilinged by giant fans that only somewhat dissipate the odor of sweat. The floor is an evolving phantasm of trampolines and colorful foam sculptures, all designed to make falling a more pleasant experience. In between are various ropes, beams, rings, and bars more fit for an orangutan’s strength than a person’s. My daughter and her classmates do their exercises beneath these, venturing onto various apparatus at the direction of their coaches. The smaller athletes are not allowed to attempt just any old movement, yet they test the limits of their own boldness. It’s obvious they want to go further, to climb higher. The twelve-year-olds wish to be fifteen, the nine-year-olds to be twelve, the four-year-olds to be nine. In the same gym as these tiny sprites are 18-year-olds appearing to contend as world champion tumblers. Muscled like Delacroix paintings, these new adults launch upward as though leaving a trebuchet. It inspires some alarm to have Olympic aerials translated from television into real life. The parent in me cringes. Not to say the coaches and athletes aren’t careful. In point of fact, all the somersaults, handsprings, L-sits, dismounts, and flight elements follow meticulously constructed body patterns many seasons in the making. Each astounding turn of a gymnast is a lightning bolt tracing down an unseen trail of ions, a pathway of yearslong discipline. That invisible part is what my daughter is currently enduring. The younger children work on small drills, inscribing their bodily memories with rote stretches and minuscule swings, slowly teaching each muscle from week to week to leverage a little more weight over thin air. From the gallery, it appears to run the risk of boredom. While the advanced students wheel through the air around them, the newest amateurs merely hold their hands up and pogo down a long trampoline. Or they roll. Or they walk on a line. If we are compared to plants in Scripture, to vines and lilies and oaks, it stands to reason that the obedience of these creatures should be iconic to us. Obedience should stand apart from understanding. Adam Whipple Reading Thomas Merton provides a good metaphor for watching them. Any hagiography toward which we might be tempted in regards to Merton gets summarily swatted away in The Sign of Jonas. It’s a journal in which he struggles openly with his frustrations. Merton wants mostly to be left alone to seek after the Lord, but his superiors continue to give him work. In addition to the normal physical life of the abbey, there is so much writing. Plus, the abbey must contend with the fact that Merton is famous. Then there are all the vagaries of small church life: bad singing, mediocre teaching, irritating make-work. Through the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost, Merton is changed even by these frustrations. Yet like a child doing her gym exercises, this grown man often does not see the point while in the moment. We wrestle with what is formative. How long is it before these stretches, prancings, and small round-offs in the gym become ballistic feats? The children must ask themselves. Our initial sense of wonder drains like a leaky bowl when we’re surrounded by derring-dos we aren’t allowed to try. All gymnastics dads owe a debt of gratitude to the Suni Lees and Simone Biles of the world for their inspiration. No cajoling of mine could instill half so much dedication in a group of nine-year-olds. In gymnastics, obedience comes before understanding. Children do not learn centripetal force and the physical mechanics of the vastus medialis; they learn to lift their legs when the teacher says so. I watch them, relegated to my spectatorial seat. They remind me of fruit trees, limbs commanded into unexplained contortions over time. Long ago, perhaps millennia, plant husbandry began to take on various forms of espalier, a practice in which woody stems are forced to grow along a prescribed pattern. If you’ve never seen it, grape vines are an obvious example, though a wily one. More geometric horticulture exists: apple trees and quince trees trained up into candelabra along stuccoed courtyards, boxwoods quietly trimmed into the pride of an English household, hornbeams pleached into living fencework. The gardening even escapes the bounds of the individual gardener, becoming a grandiose labor of generations. In India, the fey ropings of the banyan tree are woven into bridges wide and strong enough to hold stepping stones. Building these is communal in the high sense of the word. Not only does it require the efforts of sometimes an entire village, but the bridge itself is a living connection, an architecture of agreement transcending the differences of people on either side. In this, one of the rainiest corners of the world, such structures withstand floodwaters even as poor concrete spans wash away. Some banyan bridges date back more than five centuries. The trees, as far as we can tell, never know. They live, striving for an ongoing cocktail of light, water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, never asking more than simply to obey the rules written into their bodies. If we are compared to plants in Scripture, to vines and lilies and oaks, it stands to reason that the obedience of these creatures should be iconic to us. Obedience should stand apart from understanding. Who among us is actually good at this, at obeying? Who is good at applying instructions like, If you love me, keep my commandments? It is an age of deconstruction, of asking skeptical questions, though I personally tend to doubt the applicable worth of vogue terms, of which deconstruction has become one. If such things are alarming to us, as perhaps they should be at times, we might still take comfort. Firstly, skepticism is nothing new, and while the line between healthy skepticism and the sin of unbelief may be a thin one, it is not a particular function of modernity (see Thomas, called Didymus). Secondly, questions in themselves are not evil (see Book of Job). Our children ask questions, and we don’t fault them, even though we may not always give them the answers they want. We as followers of Jesus are the children of God. Why should we avoid questions? Why should we expect that the Lord would give us our preferred answer, or any answer at all? We see Sayers and Teresas, Kings and Kellers, Lewises and Tolkiens, all leaping into the glorified air, and our movements seem mundane by comparison. Adam Whipple The trees have more to say about obedience than mere notions of utility or food. They were there in the very beginning, many groves of provision, along with the one tree in the center of Eden. It’s tempting to look at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as an accident waiting to happen. Why place it there at all, a locus of entrapment in an otherwise perfect garden? Trained as we are by the unrealities of modern cinema, we are also inclined to look at this tree as a magic plant, its fruit glistening neon and pulsating with a nearly audible siren song. I wasn’t there, but I don’t suspect this was the case. What was at the center of Eden? It was obedience, a matter of choice. There are other words for this: love, worship. Without the opportunity to obey the Lord, we are not really souls. Without the choice to worship Him in our thoughts, words, and deeds, love is not love. The tree itself, I believe, was not powerful. The command was powerful. The choice to obey was powerful. It’s a slow process for us, this training up in the path we should follow. When you bend a tree to your will as a gardener, there is no fast way. In fact, there are often cross purposes. The tree buds in prolific fashion, venturing ever outward. Every spring, these buds must be rubbed off, effectively gainsaid. If the plant is left untended, limbs will sprout, constructing their own fractal trails through the air. These must be cut off in multiple acts of small violence. Then, for fruit trees, there is pruning. In the end, it makes for better apples and pears, but pruning is not the inborn will of the tree. Obedience is inherently, from our perspective, misunderstood. And irritating. Place this leg there, then down. Repeat. Repeat it again. Tie your musculature to this restrictive framework. When will it grow into something worthwhile? It is the gardener’s business to know the answer. As I watch the kids on the gym floor and pause for little breaths of Thomas Merton, I can’t ignore the parallels of my participation in the Body of Christ. There are so many irritating things I am commanded to do. Show up. Sing along. Listen. Allow houseroom for others. Don’t major in the minors. Repent. Obey. We see Sayers and Teresas, Kings and Kellers, Lewises and Tolkiens, all leaping into the glorified air, and our movements seem mundane by comparison. Yet it is in this slowness of exercise that we are made into what we already are. It is the way in which saints are made saints.

We’ve been so glad to call Leslie Jordan a friend of the Rabbit Room in recent years because we so admire the gracious spirit and communal heart that accompanies her music—whether as a part of the duo All Sons & Daughters, her work with Integrity Music, or her solo releases. No matter the outlet, Leslie has always made sure that a meaningful connection was at the heart of the creative work. With a new EP just released entitled You Are With Me, comprised of five songs she’d originally written for other artists, Leslie has now put her own spin on songs that remain important to her for myriad reasons. We recently had the chance to sit with her and talk about the new EP, why the songwriting process is still magical, and how some ideas just fall out of the sky. You’ve written so many songs in so many scenarios—in co-writing rooms, songwriting retreats, personal practice—that it makes me curious about your relationship with the muse. How magical does it feel? Is it more workmanlike than that? No, it’s still magic for me. If somebody says they have the steps to writing a great song, they’re probably lying to you. Nobody really knows. It is a mystery and I love that about songwriting. One day I will feel like I’m a great songwriter and the next I’ll feel like I should quit and work at Starbucks and never write another song again. There’s something really humbling about that. I think if I were to ever get to either extreme, to ever really feel like quitting, or that I’d peaked, then I will have lost the magic and mystery and excitement of it. But some days it’s there and some days it’s not. The key is to not get too discouraged. I compared it once before to surfing. I learned how to surf back in 2015 with some friends out in California and we spent a long time just sitting on the board and waiting for the wave. Maybe we caught one or two but we didn’t go home and think, ‘Oh, what a waste of a day.’ It’s about the act of getting in the water, paddling out, sitting and waiting, anticipating, understanding what a good wave feels like, and learning how to hold on and let go. Also, the shore is never the point, which is also key in songwriting. If the emphasis is on getting a song… like I’ve been in a room where it’s like, “All right, we gotta write this up-tempo song to finish the record.” A lot of times you’re trying to squeeze the magic into the room and I think there’s resistance when that happens. You just can’t control it. You can be a good student of craft and you can practice and put your butt in the chair every morning and work on generating content. All of those things are good and important for songwriters, but for me, the act of sitting and waiting and anticipating the mystery to show up is the point nine times out of ten. Then when you get the song, when you ride the wave in, that’s when the excitement comes. But you don’t quit when you don’t catch a wave. The surfers are out there doing it the next day all over again. Do you remember the first song you ever wrote? I’m trying to remember. [Pause] I wrote a lot of really silly melodies and lyrics but the first songs I ever finished were likely all about how my life was falling apart. My parents went through a divorce when I was in sixth grade and I’d just learned how to play guitar in fifth grade. I was just a really sad teenager. [Laughs] I really used music as a tool for processing grief and asking questions. That’s pretty serendipitous to have learned that just prior and to then have that as a vehicle… For sure. My first instrument was the violin and I don’t think that would have been as helpful. [Laughs] Nobody wants to hear a sad violinist. We’d love to walk through the new EP with you and get the origin story of each, starting with “You Are With Me.” Yeah, that’s the oldest song on the record and I wrote it with Sandra McCracken in 2017. My husband and I were adopting and waiting for our son to come home. He’d been born and we were just waiting. I remember that as a pretty dark period in my life and wrote that verse, chorus, and bridge. I took it to Sandra [McCracken] and needed her help to finish it. I didn’t have an outlet for it at that point, but she put it on her record and I love that version. I also loved the chance to put it in my own voice for this project. I also love the production on this from Jess [Ray]. I sent her the stems for the vocal and piano and a few other things and she built a lot of that instrumentation around it. The first time she sent it back to me, I just wept. I felt like it transported me back to that moment. So sonically, I think that song does what it says. I feel a presence in that song when I listen to it. Love that. “A Thousand Shores”? I wrote “A Thousand Shores” with Zach Bolen [Citizens]. That was the first chorus I’d written by myself in probably years. A lot of times I don’t come into a co-write with an idea, since I like to let the artist dictate where the song goes if I’m writing specifically for their record. But I came in that day with that chorus and said, “I think I have an idea but it may not fit with Citizens.” He was so encouraging and wanted to write that song and the rest of it spilled out. I love that song and their version of it. I was driving through my little town while listening to that bridge and was going 50 in a 30 because it gets me so pumped up. [Laughs] [Laughs] What about “You Hold It All”? That was written on a Porter’s Gate retreat with three authors, actually. What I love about Porter’s Gate is that they’ll bring in authors, theologians, pastors, songwriters, and thought leaders together to talk about a subject and then we write a song about it. We were writing songs for a new record that came out last year called Worship for Workers and were talking about how we live in a very over-achieving society. We can forget to put all of that longing and striving in the Lord’s hands. So that was fun for me because those authors had never been in a co-write before and they were like, “Wow, I wrote a song!” It was so fun to see their expression and be proud of the work we did together. What’s the story behind “Let It Be Lovely”? That was written with Hannah Hobbs for her project, Sundown. We wrote on Zoom two years ago and she was trying to round out her record. She did something similar where she’s written so many songs we’ve sung in the church. She’s been a part of Hillsong for many years, and we met back in 2016. So she was just looking for a few original non-church songs, and her publisher hooked us up. I bought in that first verse and said, “I had this lullaby in mind.” We both have kids the same age and talked about singing the truths of scripture to our kids, so she started singing that chorus. It’s another song that kind of fell out, which is awesome. The last song on the new EP is “Good To Me”. It’s funny. It’s not out yet in its original form. It was recorded for a Porter’s Gate record called Sanctuary Songs and that whole album won’t come out until September but we recorded it back in February. Back in October 2022, we had a retreat for that record talking about mental health and the importance of creating resources for the church to use around this idea of being equipped to help those with mental challenges. I was struggling to write songs because I thought this topic is one the church doesn’t do a great job addressing it. We were at Keats Island in British Columbia and there was a blackberry bush that lined the road. I reached in to grab a blackberry and pull one out and in the process, I raked my finger on a thorn. Immediately this lyric came to me: “I can taste the sweetness of our mercy / But I feel the sting of grief still in my chest / Not sure I’ve known the one without the other / So I’ll cling to the belief I know the best / You have been, you will be, you are so good to me.” The things I’ve walked through in the last years of my life have been about the “both/and”. It’s not one or the other. It’s not the high or the low but the high and the low. A lot of times we don’t get to pick and choose whether it’s grief or joy. A lot of times those things come hand-in-hand, so that song is special to me as well. Matt Conner is a former pastor and church planter turned writer and editor. He’s the founder of Analogue Media and lives in Indianapolis.

In the early days of an artist’s career, there’s a good amount of wandering and experimenting, planting seeds that will someday blossom into their own kind of art. Many of us have watched that transformation happen in real time with Skye Peterson. Longtime Andrew Peterson fans may recognize her voice singing harmonies in the background of her dad’s records, going as far back as 2012’s Light for the Lost Boy. Growing up with a deep love for music and full immersion in Nashville’s songwriter scene led her toward collaborating on a number of projects — playing in the band Wake Low with her brothers, collaborating with NAMO and The Gettys, and releasing a few solo EPs of her own. She’s been sharpening her craft for years, and now on her full-length debut Where the Winter Was, we hear the sound of a young artist finding her voice. And the sound is beautiful. From start to finish, Peterson’s debut album features her best songwriting yet, blending rich theological insights and open-hearted storytelling. “Real Love” opens the record with an invitation into truth that is timeless and raw, but gently spoken through Peterson’s hushed, tender vocals: No, love isn’t always a voice in the room It pierces like an arrow when the sound breaks through It’s not always a Bible that points to the Truth No, love might bend you and break you but it’ll carry you too So look at me, lean in close, I’ll show you real love In a tight ten songs, Peterson plumbs the depths of story and the human heart, drawing from her lived experience as a young woman growing up in a complicated world. “Suburbs,” a tribute to her mother’s love, speaks from the liminal space of young adulthood, when growing up means finding new adventures and missing the only home you’ve known. It’s immediately followed by “Not So Sure,” a quietly yearning track offering a compassionate glimpse into middle school insecurities that haunt us into adulthood. Peterson’s songs resonate with the universal longing at any age as she sings on “Suburbs”: “the imprint of eternity / A sense that there is somewhere we belong.” Since graduating high school, Peterson has spent time studying theology in college, and these intellectual pursuits have added an extra dimension to her songwriting. Putting the old, old stories in conversation with her own gives some of her best songs an extra richness, like “Cedars of Lebanon.” In reflecting on the trees that built Solomon’s temple, she finds a prayer for future strength: “Let me reach the heights and scrape the skies / Let me rest upon the Promise like a cedar of Lebanon…” Fans of singer/songwriters like Taylor Leonhardt, Sandra McCracken, and Jess Ray will find a lot to love on Where the Winter Was. The layered acoustic sound draws you in, while the lyrics grow deeper and reveal new treasures on every listen. Jen Rose Yokel is a poet, freelance writer, and spiritual director. Her words have appeared at She Reads Truth, CCM Magazine, and other publications, and she released her first poetry collection Ruins & Kingdoms in 2015. Originally from Central Florida, she now makes her home in Fall River, Massachusetts with her husband Chris, where you can find her enjoying used bookstores and good coffee.

Fifty years have passed since Corrie Ten Boom’s story, The Hiding Place, captivated audiences with her heroic testimony of a family offering resistance and refuge at great personal cost. In August, Rabbit Room Theatre, along with strategic partners, are excited to share the story anew with this global cinematic event following a four-week sold-out stage run in Nashville. From Tennessee to Tasmania, A.S. “Pete” Peterson’s adaptation will be hitting movie theaters next month, so we sat down to talk in-depth about Corrie as a true hero of the faith, the complexity of ideas involved, and finding such a reach beyond the Rabbit Room’s headquarters. [Ed note: In theaters on August 3 & 5 ONLY. Find a theater near you at TheHidingPlaceFilm.com.] Let’s start with the actual story here of Corrie Ten Boom and The Hiding Place. I’m interested to hear from you what made this a story you and others wanted to tell? I think Corrie’s story is so compelling because she’s such a fascinating person. There are things that happen in her story and ways that she talks about the world that are really difficult to make peace with or to justify—the idea of gratitude in the middle of a concentration camp is not an easy idea. It’s beautiful and wonderful and also complicated. So I think that intersection of complicated ideas is part of why people so revere here. She’s really a remarkable person and the conclusions that she came to are incredibly counter-cultural. In the 50 years since she told her story, there’s not been another retelling of it. In a sense, the generation that fell in love with Corrie Ten Boom as she traveled the world and as people watched the movie and read her book, that generation is in their sixties and seventies and eighties now. They love her desperately but there’s another generation that would say, “Corrie, who?” So I think it’s a privilege for me to take the impact of that story and hopefully deliver it to a new generation because it’s not a story I think should be forgotten. I think Corrie is one of the heroes of the faith in a capital letter kind of way. We’re on the verge of maybe forgetting that. We had to figure out a way to tell her story in a way that would open up the ears of those who don’t believe what I believe. A.S. Peterson A lot has changed since the first presentation of Corrie’s story and the culture in which the story is being told. What are the resonant points that you hear from people who’ve watched the play or the new film screening? One of the key things to remember is that when Corrie wrote the book and when the original film came out was in the ‘70s. Our culture was in a very different place as it relates to religion and especially Christianity. I mean, Christianity was the water that everyone swam in all of the time. People spoke the language whether they went to church or not, so that story was told in a way that was very Christian, very church-like, very Christian-ese. For better or worse, that language is much harder to hear by the culture at large because there’s so much freight attached to that way of talking about what we believe. One of our challenges going into it, because I wanted Corrie’s story to continue for another generation, was that we had to figure out a way to tell her story in a way that would open up the ears of those who don’t believe what I believe. One of my challenges to the folks we were making it with was that if we can’t present this show to a general audience in a way that they can enjoy and get the message out of it in the same way that I, as a Christian, can, then I don’t know if we will have achieved our goal to create something that can perpetuate for another generation. So it was interesting. We tested it and invited people who weren’t Christians or who were even antagonistic to Christianity and asked them what they thought of the show. I was surprised, really, to hear that people connected with it. They did not trip up over the way it presents faith and religion. At one point, we invited an actress to read the part of Corrie Ten Boom who was not only not Christian but who was antagonistic toward it. We wanted to see, first, if she could perform the part in a way that was believable and, second, what she would make of all of this. Well, she did an amazing job, of course, because that’s what actors do and that’s a testament to her as a professional. [Note that this was not Nan Gurley who eventually played the part on stage and in the film.] But someone asked her, ‘Hey, what did you make of the religion of the show?’ She thought about it a minute and then said, “You know, I don’t know that I noticed any religion in the show, but I did notice a lot of talk about Jesus and I love Jesus. It’s Christianity that I don’t like. So I really loved it.” That was interesting to me. That told me that we were on the right track, because we’re finding ways to tell the same story in a way that’s able to sneak past the watchful dragons of those who are on guard against all of the Christian-ese and instead they’re able to hear the truth about the person of Christ and how he changes your experience in the midst of the Holocaust. That, to me, is a powerful testament that we were on the right track. You had this great theatrical run where you sold out the last few weeks of shows and then suddenly it was done. Did you know there could be something like this theatrical release happening then or was it tough to think that all that momentum was suddenly over? It’s actually something that’s been evolving for years. We did a production of Frankenstein back in 2017 or 2018 that also sold out its entire run and then won some awards. We decided to go into the studio with the full cast and record an audio version of it. One of the reasons behind that thinking is that it felt so unfair that we put so much work and creativity into making this beautiful experience for people, and then on closing night, it vanishes and evaporates into thin air and it’s gone. So we thought, “What if we created an artifact so that people can continue to experience this in some way?” The first version of that was this [Frankenstein] audiobook. Then when we got into COVID and we couldn’t produce theater, we worked on a short film of one of Wendell Berry’s stories which he’d written for the stage called Sonata at Payne Hollow. We turned that into a short film and that was our first opportunity to ask, “What if we could capture theater on film in a way that’s really interesting?” We’ve all seen Masterpiece Theater or something like it, and it’s shot with a movie camera but it’s just filming a play. Even if it’s the greatest play in the world, it’s just not very engaging. We’ve all seen that, right? Well, we weren’t interested in that at all. Thankfully, we have some really creative filmmakers here in Nashville to work with. We continued developing those ideas through COVID, so when we got ready to put The Hiding Place on stage, we immediately thought, “You know what? Let’s try to do this at feature length.” We’d done it at the short film level and felt like it was well-executed, so we planned from the beginning to capture The Hiding Place because we felt like it was an important story that would have wide appeal and we were so proud of the cast members who were putting on these amazing performances. For me, I also wanted to give the cast the gift of seeing what they’d created. I’ve been working in theater for ten years now and it’s always broken my heart that we’ve put so much work into this and the cast that makes it happen never gets to see what they’ve created. They’re on stage the whole time. There are scenes, especially in The Hiding Place, where it’s got a non-linear structure. You’ll have a cast member ask me, “Why am I doing this right now?” I have to say, “Trust me, it makes sense to the audience.” So having the opportunity to show them what they’ve created was just so satisfying. And we also get to preserve it for the world at large—not just Nashville. It’s a movie that will instigate discussion. I guarantee you. There are difficult things that happen in this film that will trouble folks and inspire folks. It’s really ripe for that type of engagement. A.S. Peterson Glad you mention being outside of Nashville because this release has a global reach. What exactly is the reach and what are your hopes there? It’s in 800 theaters across the world. I was just on a call today where they were talking about the theaters they’re showing it in Tasmania, which just seems crazy to me. [Laughs] We also just heard that it’s selling out theaters in Australia, which is fascinating. So, yeah, it has a global reach right now which is exciting. From the Rabbit Room’s perspective, we do a lot here in Nashville. We put on the Local Show, we put on Hutchmoot, we do lectures, and we have open hours here at North Wind Manor. We’re constantly bombarded with people saying, “Hey, I don’t live in Nashville so how can I participate in all of this great stuff that’s going on?” So internally, we have a lot of discussion about how we can serve those people. We have a lot of things in development that I’m really excited about. But the truth is this film is one really big answer to that question. On a global scale, we’re saying, “Hey, you heard about this film when it was on stage in Nashville and now everybody across the world has the opportunity to participate in it themselves.” Because the Rabbit Room believes that art is a gathering point that creates community, it’s our hope that people will not go alone, that they’ll see it as an opportunity to do Rabbit Room-like stuff, get some friends together or a small group together, go see the movie, then go out to the pub and sit down with a drink to discuss it afterward. It’s a movie that will instigate discussion. I guarantee you. There are difficult things that happen in this film that will trouble folks and inspire folks. It’s really ripe for that type of engagement. What happens with this story after this theatrical release? Great question. We’ve been reaching out to various producers and touring companies to see if there’s a life for the stage show on a bigger scale. That could be off-Broadway or touring… we just don’t know the answer to that question yet. Theater is a very complicated and very expensive business and it has to make sense for everybody involved. So we’re not sure. We are holding onto the rights for performances by other theater companies until we know what the answer is. But at some point, certainly, it will be available for colleges and community theaters and regional theaters to do their own productions. So ultimately there will be a life for the material beyond this production. Beyond that, we’re not sure. We’re hoping for streaming opportunities but that all looms in a foggy future we’ve not yet defined. But what we are hoping is that this will do well and people will enjoy it because we want to do this again with a different show and the following year with a different show. I love to envision a future where the Rabbit Room has really created this sort of experience in which people can participate. I would love to be on stage with a show in Nashville and know that, at the same time, people could be in North Carolina watching it in the theater. #semifeature

As an English professor who is particularly interested in mythology and the role that stories play in helping us making meaning of our lives, I’m pretty attuned to noticing when such references show up and how they are utilized, whether in films or books. Like many people, this past weekend I saw Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated film on the “father of the atomic bomb”, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who headed The Manhattan Project during World War II. Nolan has explored myth, myth-making, and the power of stories to shape our personal and cultural realities in many of his other films, particularly in his Batman trilogy and Inception, and even though Oppenheimer is only his second film based on historical events (Dunkirk being the other), he still brings that mythological sensibility to the material. GIVER OF FIRE It’s not too difficult, because the material lends itself to myth-making, particularly due to the fact that Nolan based the film in large part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin and published in 2005. Nolan references this at the very beginning of the film when the following words appear against the background of a roiling atomic mushroom cloud: Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity. The myth of Prometheus comes to us from Greek mythology and first appeared in the writings of the poet Hesiod. In most versions of the story, Prometheus was a lesser god who was seen as a benefactor to mankind, in contrast to the mighty but petty Olympian gods who mostly just demanded worship from humans. After Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity, the angry Zeus orders that he is to be chained to a rock for all eternity, and that every day an eagle will come and eat his liver, only for it to be regenerated again every night. The connection between Prometheus and Oppenheimer was first made, not in the 2005 biography, but in a 1945 issue of Scientific American, which wrote about Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists: “Modern Prometheans have raided Mount Olympus again and have brought back for man the very thunderbolts of Zeus”. The main parallel that Oppenheimer’s biographers and Nolan also trace is the way in which Oppenheimer was treated by the United States government. He was initially hailed as a hero, but when he began to express doubt about his creation and opposition to more hawkish nuclear policies, he was branded a Communist sympathizer, disgraced, and had his security clearance revoked—made a scapegoat much like Prometheus. But ScreenRant writer Cathal Gunning sees an even deeper level to the Prometheus parallels in Oppenheimer, and I saw it too: Prometheus gifting humanity fire isn’t a straightforward, literal favor in the Greek myth. Fire can be seen to represent technology, scientific exploration, society or civilization, arts, and the humanities. With the gift of fire, humans could build communities and develop infrastructure but also destroy one another. Much like Oppenheimer’s nuclear tests paved the way for the arms race and Cold War that defined the coming decades, Prometheus’s decision brought humanity closer to the status of the Greek gods. However, in both cases, this decision was not necessarily the right one. The reason that an eagle was sent to eat Prometheus’s liver is that this organ represented emotion in Greek mythology.Thus, Prometheus was tortured not just by a big bird eating his insides, but by the human cost of his gift. Fire built civilization which meant, by extension, the discovery also played a role in tribal division, the development of warfare, and eventually even the atom bomb. The impact of Prometheus’s actions was impossible for him to predict but, crucially, the legacy of his gift lasted forever. Prometheus was tortured by his decision to share his ingenuity with humanity, which is exactly what led Oppenheimer to oppose the development of the hydrogen bomb mere years after he was instrumental in the invention of its predecessor, the atom bomb. Nolan seems to be drawing on this idea as well as he traces Oppenheimer’s eventual fall from grace at the hands of certain government officials in parallel to his own haunting visions of the future. The way that Oppenheimer’s regret emerges in the film also shares similarities with another scientist of a more modern myth. THE MODERN PROMETHEUS The mother of all tales of scientific caution is, of course, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1818. Interestingly, what most people probably don’t know is that Shelley was already making connections between Greek mythology and modern science because the subtitle of Frankenstein is The Modern Prometheus. While as far as I can tell Nolan makes no attempts to explicitly reference Frankenstein in his film, I can’t help but notice the parallels because it’s a text I’ve taught quite a lot in the past few years. It has become a parable that all other tales of scientific daring subconsciously allude to. The parallel is most clearly seen in the scientists themselves, Oppenheimer and Victor Frankenstein, and how they behave before and after their scientific breakthroughs. Like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer is portrayed as a scientific genius at a young age, eagerly curious to uncover the deepest mysteries of the universe, but a bit naive to the implications of uncovering those mysteries. They both only realize after it’s too late what they have unleashed on the world. Victor is so obsessed with trying to uncover the mysteries of life and death that he doesn’t realize he’s creating a monster until the moment it comes to life: I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Similarly, in Oppenheimer, the physicist continually retreats into theory when faced with the future implications of creating the atomic bomb. Only when he witnesses the horrific power of what he’s helped create does he start to have serious reservations. DESTROYER OF WORLDS Perhaps the most famous anecdote related to Oppenheimer comes from an interview he did in 1965 when he was recalling the moment of the Trinity Test: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. Wired writer James Temperton explains the larger context of this quote from the Hindu text: The Bhagavad Gita is 700-verse Hindu scripture, written in Sanskrit, that centers on a dialog between a great warrior prince named Arjuna and his charioteer Lord Krishna, an incarnation of [the Hindu deity] Vishnu. Facing an opposing army containing his friends and relatives, Arjuna is torn. But Krishna teaches him about a higher philosophy that will enable him to carry out his duties as a warrior irrespective of his personal concerns. This is known as the dharma, or holy duty. It is one of the four key lessons of the Bhagavad Gita, on desire or lust; wealth; the desire for righteousness, or dharma; and the final state of total liberation, moksha. Seeking his counsel, Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his universal form. Krishna obliges, and in verse 12 of the Gita he manifests as a sublime, terrifying being of many mouths and eyes. It is this moment that entered Oppenheimer’s mind in July 1945. The reason the verse from the Gita came so readily to Oppenheimer’s mind is that he’d been a long-time reader of Hindu poetry and scripture, declaring the Bhagavad Gita to be the “most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue”. More than that, he was taken by the philosophy of holy duty expressed in the text, once writing in a letter to his brother Frank: “Through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of freedom from the accidents of incarnation… and that detachment which preserves the world it renounces”. Only through discipline, he added, is it possible to “see the world without the gross distraction of personal desire, and in seeing so, accept more easily our earthly privation and its earthly horror”. While it’s not explicit in Nolan’s film, the Hindu concept of holy duty may help explain how someone like Oppenheimer thought he could pursue such a horrific project like the atomic bomb in such a seemingly detached way. His country had called on his service, and there was a fear that the Nazis were attempting to build their own atomic bomb, so he applied all his scientific genius and energy to seeing the task through. However, Nolan’s film suggests that even Hindu philosophy failed Oppenheimer in the end, when faced with the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Cold War nuclear armament build-up that followed. He could not achieve his desired serenity. As he said two years after the Trinity Test: “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatements can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” A WORLD ON FIRE All of these myths come to a head powerfully in the end scene of the film. Oppenheimer is having a conversation with Albert Einstein about the science of chain reaction, but you quickly realize that they’re talking about the geo-political chain reaction caused by the creation of the atomic bomb itself. Oppenheimer confesses to Einstein that he believes they’ve started something that will destroy the world. We’re then left with a close-up of his haunted eyes and a vision of the planet engulfed by fire. Like Frankenstein, he’s realized too late that what has been done cannot be undone. Prometheus’ fire has become a raging inferno with no seeming end. Christopher Nolan ingeniously employs these myths and plays them off each other to illuminate the real-life story of Oppenheimer and show how once again mythology and stories often help us make sense not only of momentous historical events, but the complex and enigmatic actions of humans like ourselves in the midst of such times.

Bespoke is not a word we use very much. The word means “custom made” and is most often employed in the clothing industry. I’ve never had any clothing custom-made for myself, but I understand the appeal. There is a welcomed utility in something made for the masses but there is a unique beauty in something made for the particular. With some creative license, I’d like to use this bespoke language in relation to worship music. The American church seems to be rather enjoying the utility of mass-produced worship music while simultaneously missing out on the beauty of locally-sourced music. A recent study found that a vast majority of chart-topping worship songs are coming from only four different churches. “If you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same,” the study’s authors wrote, “it may be because the worship music you are most likely to hear in many churches is written by just a handful of songwriters from a handful of churches.” This is the sad reality but I wonder: what has been lost in this mass-produced stranglehold on worship music? The True Religion of the Place In Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, Jayber offers the following commentary on a church service: “I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place…I liked the sound of the people singing together, whatever they sang, but some of the hymns reached into me all the way to the bone.” Much of Berry’s Port William novels focus on the “membership” of a people and a place. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the local church operates at this same intersection. Liturgy is often defined as “the work of the people.” Not a generic people but a specific people. A people inhabiting a place. A people in fellowship with one another. The local church needs custom-fit songs because we are uniquely-shaped people. Parsing the Heart With this grassroots vision, I tried my hand at writing worship songs a few years ago. I have no formal music background but I didn’t let that stop me. In 2017, I wrote a song called Our God is Good because a divorced woman in our church told me about how hard it was to attend service by herself. For many weeks, she didn’t feel as if she could authentically voice the words to the songs that were being sung. She found comfort in the fact that though she could not sing them herself, that her friends and community around her could sing for her. The bridge to the song I wrote proclaims: “A broken hallelujah is still a hallelujah.” In this past year, our church resurrected the old hymn We Have an Anchor* and put a new tune to it. Our three-year-old church plant is full of people who are hurting and doubting. Our congregation does not usually sing very loudly but we have noticed these lyrics bring out their voice: “Will your anchor hold in the storms of life, when the clouds unfold their wings of strife? When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain, will your anchor drift, or firm remain?” Marilynne Robinson, in her novel Home, describes preaching as, “parsing the broken heart of humankind and praising the loving heart of Christ.” Preaching is not singing but worship music has the same potential to parse the heart of humankind and point to the loving heart of Christ. Creating New Culture In his book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, Andy Crouch says: “It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just consume culture. But the only way to change culture is to create culture.” It’s easy to condemn the American church and our infatuation with generic, mass-produced music. Instead of complaining, we have a chance to create something new and beautiful. When we handpick songs for our congregation, when we write grassroots songs, and when we support artists creating bespoke music, we are creating new culture. We are parsing the heart, pointing to Christ, and heralding music that pierces the soul. * This song will be released on Folk Hymnal’s ‘We Have an Anchor’ album in August.

We are excited to welcome our new Executive Director, Dave Bruno! Here are two letters from Andrew Peterson (Rabbit Room’s President) and Pete Peterson (Rabbit Room’s Vice-President) that look back to where the Rabbit Room has been and look forward to where we’re going. A Letter from Andrew Peterson: I can’t remember the first time I met Dave Bruno, but I know I crashed at his house in San Diego about twelve years ago. His daughters were little, he and his wife were kind and hospitable in a chill, Southern California way, and I was a road-weary musician who had just done a concert—which is why the details are hazy. I think Dave’s book, The 100 Things Challenge, had just come out, and as an advocate of simplicity, I was intrigued and had lots of questions. Dave and Leanne were humble and down to earth, so easy to talk to that I remember thinking that I had just made some new friends. I’m pretty sure that if you had told either of us that night that all these years later Dave would be stepping in as the executive director of the Rabbit Room we both would have laughed—not only was there no such role (and there wouldn’t be for several years) but California and Tennessee are a long way from each other. It’s one of those things that I never would have guessed, but in hindsight feels meant to be. God seems to work that way, doesn’t he? When I founded the Rabbit Room back in 2006, I had big dreams: a coffee house and bookstore, a publishing house, a concert series, a web store, a community, some kind of bricks-and-mortar gathering place for people drawn to the vibrant intersection of robust Christianity and good, true, and beautiful works of art. I hoped that the ministry would not only support writers, artists, and musicians but would also inspire others to engage in their own creativity as a way of heralding the Kingdom of God. A tall order, to be sure, and we had no idea what we were doing. Yet after sixteen years, we’re still here. I stand amazed at the way the Lord has not only sustained the Rabbit Room through some tough seasons but caused it to flourish. The Lord worked through so many people along the way—from volunteers to members to donors to the board to the hardworking staff. One of those people, of course, is my brother, Pete, who’s been the executive director for the last seven years. He spent countless hours managing the growing team, the growing press, the growing budget, the growing Hutchmoot, the growing demands of this little ministry that was no longer so little. I have no idea how he did it, but while holding down all the executive stuff he also managed to write and stage several amazing plays, longing all the while to focus more on being a playwright. With the launch of Rabbit Room Theatre and The Hiding Place, the time has come at last to allow him to lean wholly into his gifting as a playwright and publisher. It makes me so happy that he’s stepping into this role with all of his creativity and (I would argue) genius. And that’s where Dave Bruno comes in. After an extensive search and interview process, the board unanimously agreed to offer him the position. Dave was one of the early writers for the Rabbit Room, he attended the very first Hutchmoot (and most Hutchmoots since), started multiple successful businesses, moved to Nashville to work at Lipscomb University, and helped with many Local Shows over the years—and now he’s found himself in this place and time with a remarkable set of gifts and passions that make him well suited to fill the role. It brings me great pleasure that he accepted the position as the new executive director of the Rabbit Room. As I said, twelve years ago Dave and I would have laughed at the thought. Now we thank God and say, “Of course!” I couldn’t be happier—for Pete or for Dave or for the Rabbit Room—and I can’t wait to see what marvelous thing the Lord will have us laughing about twelve years from now. -Andrew Peterson A Letter from Pete Peterson Serving as the executive director of the Rabbit Room for the past seven years has been one of the greatest adventures of my life. In that time Rabbit Room Press and Rabbit Room Theatre have matured into fully-fledged programs requiring all of the attention and creativity I have to offer, and I’m thrilled that the Rabbit Room board of directors has given me the mandate to pursue those programs with all my energy. This move to more focused work, however, which began over a year ago, has led us on a journey of asking who would step into the leadership position that I was transitioning away from. It’s something that’s weighed heavily on the minds of the Rabbit Room leadership for a long time. The organization stands at the brink of a fresh and exciting phase in its life, and after a lot of prayer and discernment, we’re finally taking our first steps into this new era by announcing Dave Bruno as our new executive director. Dave comes to us from Lipscomb University where he served as Vice President of Marketing, but he’s been part of the Rabbit Room story for more than a decade. Dave longtime supporter and contributor to the Rabbit Room and an integral part of the community here in Nashville. More importantly, he’s a kind, soft-spoken, pastorally-gifted person who loves Jesus, believes in the value of teamwork and collaboration, cares deeply for the people around him, and is committed to the thriving of the Rabbit Room, its mission, and its work. I could not be more delighted to welcome him aboard. I look forward to his wisdom and leadership, and I can’t wait to see how his talents are going to serve this community as we continue to cultivate and curate good work for the life of the world. Welcome aboard, Dave. We’re glad you’re here. -Pete Peterson #semifeature

Our good friend Jamin Still is back with further adventures in the fantastical world of Hibaria in his forthcoming full-length novel, Tales of Hibaria: The Master of Tides. With a new Kickstarter campaign, Jamin is now offering readers the chance to be the first to receive the new book along with several other exciting offers. If you’ve been around the Rabbit Room for any length of time, you likely already know Jamin’s work—whether from his writings on the blog, his podcast “The Artists &” with Kyra Hinton, or his artwork as an incredibly gifted painter/illustrator. We loved his previous book, Tales of Hibaria: The Awakening, and look forward to immersing ourselves in his latest work coming this fall. Pledge for Jamin’s Kickstarter Campaign In order to get more perspective on his vision and work, Jamin recently sat down with Kyra Hinton to talk more about his love of fantasy, why he’s so compelled by magic, and the story that unfolds in Master of Tides. If you want to listen to the audio interview only.

I saw a tweet recently that said “contrary to what people on twitter will tell you, watching 1960s latvian arthouse films or whatever doesn’t make u a better, smarter or more interesting person. in fact, it usually just means you’re extra annoying]. watch whatever u like. the fast and the furious is perfectly fine.” For whatever reason, this tweet got under my skin. What’s wrong with movies made in the country of Latvia? My wife is from Czech Republic; is it “annoying” to watch movies from there, too? And how do you define arthouse, anyway? Something made for less than $200 million? Is my barrage of questions for this innocuous tweet an extreme reaction? Sure, maybe. But the more you think about a declaration of pretentiousness and elitism against the entire filmography of the country of Latvia, the more extreme it feels. At best, it’s artistically close-minded and ignorant; at worst, it’s downright ethnocentric. All of this is part of a broader trend of anti-intellectualism, especially in spaces like TikTok, where there’s been an ongoing meme about “pretentious cinephiles” supposedly becoming enraged when you tell them you’d rather watch a Marvel movie than “a 2 hour movie about the Serbian government shown through the eyes of a pigeon,” or “some 40s Italian film about the loss of a man’s bike in the midst of poverty,” or “a Croatian film about a man’s divorce process with his wife.” These are all direct quotes from viral TikToks in the last year. Ignoring the fact that all of those movies sound like total bangers, there’s an even more pressing fact to acknowledge: contrary to the claims of the tweet from earlier, watching foreign cinema can make you a smarter and more interesting person. At least, it certainly makes you more well-rounded and thoughtful. Sure, for the odd self-righteous nerd here and there, a little taste of obscure art can make them feel enlightened and above their “normie” friends who still only watch films made in America. But for the vast majority of people who truly broaden their horizons, watching foreign cinema has the opposite effect; it makes you feel humbler, less knowledgeable, more curious about the areas of cinema and art that you don’t know and haven’t explored. There could be something amazing lurking around every corner if you’re willing to put aside your preconceived notions, “overcome the one inch barrier of subtitles,” and see the world with fresh eyes. This is all prelude to what I actually wanted to talk about: the way that foreign cinema can train and prepare us to understand and interpret The Bible, or any other ancient text. Does that feel unrelated in a vacuum? Sure. But if you know me, you know I’m all about connecting unrelated things. It all started when I was (once again) rewatching RRR this month with some new friends. RRR is an amazing movie, and part of its amazingness arises because it is equal parts specific and universal, culturally particular yet wildly accessible. There’s a scene at the end of the movie, though, when that accessibility might start to wane for American audiences: the film ends with a lengthy musical sequence as the stars dance together in front of massive portraits of seemingly-random Indian people in the background, none of whom are characters we’ve seen. Shortly after, another grey-bearded Indian man (who hasn’t appeared in the rest of the film) shows up onscreen to much fanfare and starts to dance with our characters, too. In order to view things with new eyes, sometimes we need to allow ourselves first to simply be re-enchanted again. Houston Coley It’s only after some gaining further context that Westerners can piece together what’s going on: the portraits are well-known Indian revolutionaries being honored for their sacrifice. The bearded man is the director of the film, SS Rajamouli, a huge star and beloved storyteller in India’s cinema landscape. The musical sequence is a celebration of the film, but also a celebration of Indian independence. Suddenly, it all clicks into place. RRR is an accessible movie, but there are still a good amount of little moments that are likely to confuse American audiences—especially when something happens that is clearly significant but we don’t quite understand why. When Bheem puts on a white “kufi” prayer cap on his head before going into Delhi, I usually whisper to the person watching with me that it’s important to know he’s going undercover as a Muslim. If you don’t pick up on this detail, the movie still works just fine—but if you know it beforehand, you’ll really understand the big twist on display when Ram sees Bheem bowing to the statue of a Hindu god, revealing that he’s not who he thought he was. I didn’t pick up on that detail during the first viewing. Many repeated watches (and subsequent research) made it click. I don’t say all of this to brag about my oh-so-cultured understanding of Indian cinema, because to be honest, I’m still just trying to watch through SS Rajamouli’s filmography before even branching out into anything else. I’m a total newbie. Rajamouli’s movies aren’t even remotely the most layered or complex stories I could be watching, either. But they’re still stories from another culture, and that means there will be significant beats and symbols and undercurrents that fly completely below any Westerner’s radar on an initial viewing. My argument is this: humility and curiosity fueling our search for meaning and context and significance in an alien storytelling landscape is a very healthy feeling to experience. And it’s also what reading The Bible should be like. During my time at L’Abri in England back in 2020, one of the dilemmas that was most plaguing my mind was why, if The Bible was indeed some kind of transcendent book, the so-called divine author would have made it so difficult and complex to understand. If The Bible is from God, why did he make it so capable of different interpretations? Why did he make it so dense and historical? Why did he choose to root it in the particular culture of Ancient Israel? Why are there still so many things about it that I feel like I need to study and re-read to grasp, or other things that feel like they completely contradict each other? I posed these questions to a friend of mine at a lunch discussion during that term at L’Abri. He didn’t answer me right away. Around that same time, in the spring of 2020, I was still just getting off the high of seeing Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite in theaters eight times and recommending it to anyone who would listen, including everyone at L’Abri. Parasite was one of the first true experiences with foreign cinema I’d had in a packed theater, and I kept going back because it felt like there were still so many layers to unpack—layers to the social commentary, layers to the visual language and symbols, and layers to the cultural specificity that were foreign and overwhelming to me in all the best ways. My friend didn’t respond to my question about the overwhelming complexity of the Bible that day. A few days later, though, we were cooking a meal together and he brought it up again. “I was thinking about your question about The Bible from last week. Do you think Parasite would have been a better movie if it was less complex? Would you have seen it eight times if it was simple to understand?” That question totally changed my outlook on studying The Bible. Suddenly, the heavy layers of culture and ancient history and literature—layers that had once felt like an obstacle to understanding the Bible—were reframed to become the very things that made it so special. Like Parasite, maybe I needed to go back and see it again—but probably more than eight times. It might take a lifetime. And maybe that was what made it so divine and mysterious and inexhaustible. There’s an author named John Walton who wrote a book called The Lost World of Genesis One. In the book, he tries to take back the “strangeness” of the first chapter of Genesis and remind the reader of how many modern suppositions we have about science, story, planet earth, and reality that were not shared by the original audience of Genesis. It’s called The Lost World because the world of Genesis 1 should seem truly foreign and alien to us—until we remove the baggage and assumptions and questions we’ve gleaned from post-enlightenment modernity and enter the story again through fresh eyes. These days, I think it’s pretty fascinating that God chose to communicate (if you believe that sort of thing) through the extremely specific culture of Ancient Israel during an extremely specific time in ancient history—and I’ve lost all interest in trying to divorce it from that context or try to make it somehow speak directly to my situation. Maybe the very nature of understanding a foreign culture (to better understand God in turn) is part of the heart posture we were meant to develop toward this text all along: abandoning our pride, abandoning our assumptions, and trying our best to “incarnate” our eyes and ears in a different context. John Walton said, “The Bible’s message must not be subjected to cultural imperialism. Its message transcends the culture in which it originated, but the form in which the message was imbedded was fully permeated by the ancient culture.” In order to view things with new eyes, sometimes we need to allow ourselves first to simply be re-enchanted again. That’s why CS Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia: to steal past the prim-and-proper terminologies of religion and get at people’s hearts with a story that hit the same beats as the Bible—but to do so without the baggage. This is going to sound like a contradiction to the intense study and humble understanding that I described moments ago, but I promise it’s just as necessary: I re-read the entire Tanakh (also known as the Old Testament) last summer, and one of most significant things during that process was a reframing of my mindset; rather than pausing at every individual instance of confusion to try and understand the ethics of a story, the science of a story, or the reliability of a story, I tried to take everything I read at face value and divorce myself from analysis, at least at first. I trained my brain to react to every piece of insane information with the same phrase: “Woah, dude! That’s WILD.” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into a furnace and somehow survived unscathed because of a mysterious figure in the fire with them. “Woah, dude! That’s WILD.” Saul went to find somebody called The Witch of Endor to try and get advice from the spirit of the prophet Samuel? “Woah, dude! That’s WILD.” Samson tied a bunch of foxes together by their tails and set them on fire to destroy a field of crops? “Woah, dude! That’s WILD.” God parted the entire Red Sea for the Israelites to escape on dry land? “Woah, dude! That’s WILD.” As I’ve eluded earlier, I don’t think this approach is the only step to reading The Bible; you have to dive into it with a more analytical eye at some point, too, and there can be a danger (especially for protestants) of taking everything at face value and assuming that we can “get it” without any additional expertise or wisdom beyond our own. But just as RRR is capable of first being viewed as a story with some confusing points of a foreign culture that can be unpacked with repeated viewings, I do think it’s important to experience something before you understand it. When something seems significant and you’re not sure why, it’s all the better to try and figure out what the original audience would have made of it. When something seems to contradict itself, it’s worth asking questions rather than writing it off. One of my favorite authors, Rachel Held Evans, said in her book Inspired that reading The Bible is often “not just about knowing what is true; it’s about knowing when it’s true.” This is something that can only be discovered through repeated immersion. More study. More context. More pondering. More discernment. More life experience. More fresh eyes. Recently, I’ve come to more deeply understand the great importance that oral, communal storytelling (and questioning, imagining, and re-enacting) would have played in ancient Hebrew culture, in a way that makes our one-on-one intellectual “quiet time” study of The Bible feel quite individualized by comparison. That’s an interesting point on its own merits, but it’s also something that I’ve only come to understand as I’ve continued to grow, read, listen, and learn about another culture. John Walton said this: “Given God’s decision to communicate, he had to choose one language and culture to communicate to, which means that every other language and culture has their work cut out for them. As readers from a different language and culture, we have to try to penetrate the original language and culture if we are to receive the maximum benefits of God’s revelation…It is relieving to recognize that the basics of God’s revelation of himself (including his Creator role) are easily skimmed off the surface, but it is not surprising that God’s Word contains infinite depth and that it should require constant attention to study with all the tools we have available. God is not superficial, and we should expect that knowledge of him and his Word would be mined rather than simply absorbed.” There are a lot of things about Walton’s quote that remind me of how any film fan approaches foreign cinema. Just like with RRR—or anything, really—there are things we can “easily skim off the surface” and things that must be “mined” to be fully grasped. Exercising these muscles of both humble, wide-eyed experience and thoughtful, studied analysis is a good and healthy thing to do. And so, circling back to that tweet we read at the start: maybe to some, watching 1960s Latvian arthouse cinema will make you more annoying. But that annoyance should pale in comparison to the wisdom and discernment—and hopefully humility—gained from broadening your horizons. It’s worth it. And it might be worth it for more reasons than good movies.

We have an exciting announcement for our Rabbit Room members! Next week, we’re sending out a very special collection of coloring pages from Stephen Hesselman, the editor, and illustrator of the graphic novel adaptation of The Golden Key. The collection will not only include some of our favorite inked drawings from The Golden Key, but also a series of whimsical summer-themed drawings (which may or may not include a sketch of Tolkien, MacDonald, and Lewis celebrating the 4th of July). We cannot wait for you to see them! Amidst another joy-packed FIKA, Stephen and I sat down at North Wind Manor to talk about The Golden Key and his upcoming coloring collection. Read the interview below and become a member today to support our programs and enjoy a lovely afternoon being swept into the lovely imagination of Stephen Hesselman. Stephen, thanks for coming! Before we jump in, can you tell us how you got into art in the first place and how you got connected with the Rabbit Room? I really got interested in art maybe around junior high. I had some friends that were into comic books at the time so I started out with lampooning comics. I did “Splatman” instead of Batman as a first attempt. But I gradually got a bit more serious. I still have a bit of that “you make fun of the things you like” when it comes to art for some reason…but it was a fun way to start. Please tell me you still have some of those Splatman drawings. I do! I totally should’ve brought them. I’ll bring them up to the Manor another time. Soon after that, I started making up my own characters and once I got through high school I got interested in book illustration- children’s books and classics. A lot of my art was inspired by those stories. Where does the Rabbit Room fit into this? Stephen: Years ago, when I was on Facebook, I heard about it through my love for Andrew Peterson’s music. Sounds like a familiar story! I figured that’s how a lot of people find themselves here. It was fun discovering a community where it’s not just Andrew’s music that everyone relates to, but also Tolkien, Lewis, and others. After that, I knew that the Rabbit Room people were my people. It’s fun seeing how so many people get connected this way, and then end up contributing to different aspects of the community. I’m sure it was quite surreal to hold your finished edition of The Golden Key and now work on this Membership project with our team as well. Would you mind diving into a bit more of these projects? Maybe starting The Golden Key? Yes, absolutely. Tell us a bit about The Golden Key, how did this come about and what made you want to tell this story? Ten to twelve years ago, I discovered George MacDonald, (not like he was lost, I just didn’t know about him). I had exhausted the fictional worlds of Lewis and Tolkien when my sister told me that they were heavily influenced by MacDonald’s work. There’s this great collection of George MacDonald short fairy tales called “The Complete Fairy Tales” from Penguin Classics that includes a lot of his short works, one of those being The Golden Key. Out of all of those, I would have to say that The Golden Key was the most gripping one for me. It’s a fascinating story with so much visual language and meaning. I relate to a lot of the story and am so compelled by the imagery that just grabs you. I would say it’s the most visually gripping story that I’ve probably ever read. Going along the lines of imagery, how do you transfer this fairy tale to paper? Did you grow up with illustrated versions? No, I didn’t grow up with any illustrations like this. This graphic novel came really from the words of MacDonald and my imagination. It was a bit of a discipline not to look at anything others had created before me because I knew these stories have been around for a while. I’ve heard of others doing different versions, but I didn’t want anything else influencing my idea of it. I wanted to give it a stab at whatever I could come up with so it ended up being just me trying to work with MacDonald and see what my imagination conjured from his words. That just sounds so complex. Because you’re not just dealing with a story set in this colorful, complex, fairy world, but you’re also dealing with a classic author from the 19th century, which adds its own level of difficulty. I just wanted to say that looking at the book from start to finish, it just ended up being such a beautiful portrayal and really honored the visual complexity and beauty of MacDonald’s writing. Well thank you, I really appreciate that. Would you mind showing me your favorite page in the book? Absolutely. To give you some context, the two main characters, Mossy and Tangle are in this place called the Shadowland and they end up losing each other. From this scene when it closes, all you know is that Tangle doesn’t know where Mossy went. Getting to tell this scene and interact with this concept of the Shadowland was very interesting to me. It felt like a metaphor for us struggling through life. I love hearing that you’re most proud of this scene because I wouldn’t necessarily expect that based on so many of the images in the book. It’s these giant two-paged, complex, colorful prints that seem to stick out the most when you flip through all the pages, yet the scene you’ve chosen is very different from this. Its beauty seems to lie more in the story itself rather than any extravagant or colorful images. Yes, I think that’s why I like it so much. I love the images that were chosen to promote the book, I’m so proud of them. But this scene, in particular, holds a lot of complicated and powerful meaning for me. It was really hard to put it to paper when you don’t necessarily know how to do it justice. I ran what I had by a few friends and I ended up reworking several times. Besides how it turned out, I think that the collaborative part also makes it a special scene for me. I’m scared to go into this next question, but a project like this had to take a lot of time. Can you walk us through the timeframe? Stephen: This has taken years. I will say it wasn’t the only project I was working on at the time so that didn’t shorten the length by any means. I have a very distractible personality so there are plenty of other things that came up that prolonged the process. I remember starting it seriously when I moved to Nashville in 2014. Now it’s eight and a half years later, but I wrapped up the part of the process I did alone after about seven years. So you pencil sketch the drawings and then ink them yourself. After that what happens? You send it off to be colored and then what? I gave a draft of black and white with my ideas on word placement and MacDonald’s text with speech bubbles, thought bubbles, and narration. I knew it wasn’t the final placement of everything, but it was enough to send over to Pete and get his thoughts. When we felt ready to move forward, we brought Hayley Evans to color it and then Jonny Jimison to letter it. This is quite the collaboration piece between visual artists. I feel like that’s typically not something you have the opportunity to do as much. Yes, I loved that. It isn’t often you get to collaborate with other visual artists on a single project so it was nice from both the color and lettering standpoint. I feel like a lot of times you get a better result when you have several people involved, even though a part of you wants control of every aspect of the project. Around the time I finished inking, I was in a good spot to let go of those details and glad to have the help. I’m glad I was because it’s typically hard for me to give up control of my projects. On top of that, it’s like “I’ve already been working on this project for 7 years….” Exactly! I don’t want to spend 3 more years coloring or whatever it would’ve taken me. Do you typically color your stuff or just pencil and ink? Typically just draw and ink. Something that is helpful to know in terms of this art, is that, most of the time, comic book artists will do one part of the comic and pass it off. Because they are productionized and have to release a new comic monthly, they almost always work collaboratively, with a writer, a penciler, an inker, etc. But for me, it’s really tough for me to let other people ink my stuff. I do a lot of things with the inking that goes beyond the penciling. Penciling doesn’t look like my final product. So in terms of penciling and inking, the average time it takes me can add up to a total of 8 – 10 hours per image. Because of this, I haven’t really been into the process of coloring. Most of my stuff is just black and white illustration but I’m starting to play around with some watercolor stuff for fun. Would you want to do another project like this? Has a different fairy tale caught your eye? I had originally hoped to do a trilogy in terms of George MacDonald. Who knows if that will still happen, but it’s on my mind! I know we all love to hear that! With everything you’ve recently been involved in at the Rabbit Room, it felt silly to not ask you to draw some coloring pages for our Members too. I’m really happy you did. This has been so much fun for me. And I’m really happy you said YES! So just a few questions about that…our members will receive some of your inked images from the Golden Key and these summertime-inspired drawings. Tell us about the drawings you specifically created for the project. Is there a theme or are you just having fun? I jotted down about 10 ideas in my sketchbook with things I might want to do with it and decided on 6. So I’m basically sticking with the summertime theme and trying to also think about what would fit with the Rabbit Room community. I also considered what would be fun to color if I were the one with markers and colored pencils. I’m assuming somewhere in these drawings, you see bits of yourself and your own style come through. Where do they pop up in this collection? Well, I threw in a minion in this one garden photo. I feel like there needs to be a fantasy element to any sort of Rabbit Room piece. So I have this garden gnome who’s up to mischief and it feels like we should put a Minion in here, you know? The gnome obviously needs a friend. My mind is random like that. There’s another one where you have a willow tree kind of the concept from the Willow in The Lord of the Rings, but I want him to be super distracted. There’s a bit of humor in all of them and pokes fun at things that I like. Is there one you’re most excited to share? Probably the goofiest of them is the one I’m most excited about. It’s one with Tolkien, Lewis, and MacDonald wishing everybody a “Happy 4th of July” because it makes absolutely no sense. I can already tell you that that’s probably going to be the crowd favorite of them all. I can’t wait to see people take a shot at coloring these. If people want to support any upcoming projects or check out more of your work, where can people follow you or hear more about what you’re up to… Stephen: You can follow me @stephen.hesselman on Instagram to see some ink art. I’ve done a few pieces for a project with Jonny Jimison that’s coming up, and then I’m still thinking about what the new big project will be. Probably something MacDonald related but we shall see! * * * To our members, look for the collection in your inbox next week, and be sure to share your coloring talents with us! You can email us or tag us on social media using @rabbitroom to show your finished product and share it with others. As always, thanks for supporting the work that goes on here. We’re grateful for your partnership and investment! You can get a copy of Stephen’s adaption of The Golden Key at the Rabbit Room store and receive the coloring collection by becoming a member today!

Just over a decade ago, I discovered the TV show Being Erica. In the heroine, I found a character who works through past regrets in order to move forward in her present life (by doing time-travel therapy, but that part doesn’t apply here). I was inspired by Erica’s career journey, first starting out as an editorial assistant at a major publisher, then moving on to start her own boutique publishing house with a friend. I never once suspected my own journey would even vaguely resemble Erica’s (minus the time-travel therapy). I’d gone to grad school with the idea of getting into publishing and doing more of my own writing. I was even eyeing editorial assistant jobs in New York as I hit the halfway point of my studies. That fall, I did a presentation on how a writer could submit work to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, the publisher of greats like Madeleine L’Engle, T.S. Eliot, and Flannery O’Connor, and dreamt of submitting my own work there—or maybe even being on the other side of the desk. By the time I graduated in May of 2009, every single point of my presentation from six months earlier was moot. The entire landscape of publishing had changed following the economic recession, and FSG was now a subsidiary of a larger company, no longer accepting submissions directly from authors. The same was true nearly everywhere, and with the consolidation of publishers came the disappearance of jobs. I didn’t go into publishing. I turned to another skill and found myself starting a career working in the non-profit communications world, becoming facile in writing web copy and emails and social media marketing. But the dream of Being Erica never really left me. The idea of helping good books make it out into the world continued to niggle at the back of my mind as I watched the detritus of the post-recession publishing industry collapse settle, and then reform itself in new ways. The new ways were interesting—niche genre publishers with the weight of a 25-year industry expert at the helm or low-overhead business models that shared profit with authors through immediate royalties rather than advances. There were so many new ways to make and release books into the world, and so many writers and readers for them. Some of the gates of the traditional publishing industry were knocked down by little upstart independent companies. The old ways were no longer the only ways, and over the course of a decade, a new publishing landscape—far more faceted than the old—developed. But here’s the thing. Erica didn’t start her company alone. She had a partner—a frenemy of sorts—who had skills Erica didn’t, and who brought her own experience to the table. The vague idea that formed in my brain somewhere in the 2010s that I could start a publishing company always found itself face to face with the reality that there was no way I could run a business alone. Also just over a decade ago, I discovered the Rabbit Room, and one of the greatest gifts I found in it was a new community. It was a community of people who not only enjoyed critically examining art and culture the way I did (like my friends in my AP classes in high school had) but also did so through the lens of biblical Christian faith (which I’d missed among those AP classes in my public school). Over the years I build relationships among the Rabbits and pursued creative endeavors with some. The key relationship that matters in this story was one that started in the old Rabbit Room website forums. Someone had set up regional connection points, and Rachel Donahue posted that she’d just landed back in the Charlotte, North Carolina area after living overseas and wondered if anyone else was nearby. She had just started writing and was looking for a connection. I lived 20 minutes away, and we were both headed to an Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips concert the next week. We met there, set up a coffee date, and by the end of telling each other our stories, we were fast friends. Both of us had been praying for what I call a “soul friend”—a kindred spirit, to use Anne Shirley’s terminology—and God answered our prayers in each other. Those who love what is Good, True, and Beautiful often love small things—and that’s who we’re making books for. Carolyn Givens Rachel and I began co-hosting quarterly writers’ brunches under the umbrella of an arts group here in the Charlotte area and through those I met Rachel’s sister-in-law Annie Beth, another writer. One Saturday morning our brunch was composed of five women who were all looking for a critique group—so we formed one. We started by reading Diana Glyer’s book Bandersnatch about how the Inklings influenced one another and shaped our writer’s group on the principles she explores in the book. For a year or so, we met monthly, reading our work to one another and giving feedback, drinking tea, and eating gluten-free snacks. And then the pandemic arrived. Those early months of 2020 were mostly consumed with each of us keeping our heads afloat. I was running the website for a church that had moved entirely online. Rachel was homeschooling half her kids and trying to manage digital kindergarten at the local elementary for another while the youngest found herself bored with only brothers to hang out with. One of the women in our group had a young baby and a husband finishing seminary. We didn’t move our group online. It was just too much. But when the seminary grad was called to a pastorate in the Midwest that summer, we knew we needed to meet one more time before our friend left. So, socially distanced in a hot garage with the door open and fans blowing on a North Carolina July day, we gathered for one last meeting of the Band of Bandersnatches. Rachel, Annie Beth, and I each had a work that was about ready for publication, and our conversation that afternoon turned to how we could support one another in the work. Perhaps we could all self-publish, we thought, but help market each other’s books. And at some point, either aloud or in my head, I pondered, “Bandersnatch Books would be a good name for a publishing company.” Like any good communications professional in the 21st century, I went home and bought the domain name and grabbed the social media handles that evening, and then wrote a long email to Rachel with a crazy idea: what if we started a publishing company together? We had skills that many of the areas of publishing beyond the writing—especially if Annie Beth joined in, too—and we knew so many writers with great work but none of those skills. Should we do it? Should we see if Annie Beth would want to be involved, too? I had no sooner pressed send on the email to Rachel than a text from Annie Beth came through, “Twitter just informed me my friend Bandersnatch Books has a profile. Are we starting a publishing company?” I forwarded her the email and got a nearly immediate response. Yes, we should do it. Yes, of course she should be involved. The journey of becoming Bandersnatch Books has been an adventure for all of us. Even with the skills we had, we found so much to learn. While Erica and her partner started out as frenemies and I began Bandersnatch with soul-friends, we still had to learn to work together well, to push each other forward and respect each other’s boundaries. We’re proud of the work we’ve done and the books that have found their way into the world through that work. We also each want to spend more time writing our own books, so we plan to slow down a bit next year. We’ve got dreams for the future, like a Classics set and a children’s poetry anthology, but we take every dream one step at a time. In our very first business meeting, Annie Beth pointed our attention to Zechariah 4:10, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (NLT). It’s a theme for us—a reminder that we’re committed to the treasures found off the beaten path, and those are sometimes small things. But those who love what is Good, True, and Beautiful often love small things—and that’s who we’re making books for.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the church had a Music Problem. Check that—there have been lots of times when the church has had a Music Problem, but this is the one I remember. This particular Music Problem was born with the rise of so-called “Jesus Music” in the 1970s (if you’ve seen the Jesus Revolution film you’ve got some context). Jesus Music became Contemporary Christian Music, and many in the established church in the United States decried the perceived nefarious influence of “pagan” music on a format formerly reserved for pipe organs and hymnals. For me, a teenager who appreciated hymns, CCM, and, well, the other stuff, this meant I received photocopied pages from a well-intentioned lady at my summer job, all about the Satanic messages in rock music. I felt I had a good understanding of my faith and a good head on my shoulders, and these diverse genres (the other stuff included) could coexist in my ears. I thanked the lady, read the articles, and made counterpoints in my head. I’ve been moved to worship by many secular songs, I thought. I’ve experienced a very basic joy of living through good music, regardless of its genre. And besides, I added, there’s U2. I became a fan of the Irish quartet when my big brother let me copy his cassette of War, U2’s third studio album. I loved the urgency in the music, born of punk rock, and the earnestness, born of a decidedly post-punk worldview. The pounding drums from the teenage-looking Larry Mullen, Jr. shook me in the same mystic way that pounding drums have shaken adolescent boys since the dawn of time, the same way that moves well-intentioned ladies to declare that rock is the devil’s music. The ringing, soaring guitars of the mysteriously-named Edge evoked an emotional response in a boy that did not yet read poetry—goodness, I barely read prose back then. But it was the lyrics that were the linchpin. Because—and this is essential—the lyrics were Christian. Rarely is such a swirl of emotion, spirituality, and nerve expressed in such real-time: in chiming electric guitar E-minor chords, in gentle autumnal piano, in a Latin praise chorus, and in an overflowing wail of weather-worn joy. Mark Geil It’s right there in what became the U2’s first breakout hit, “Sunday Bloody Sunday:” an invocation of the name of Jesus, and a juxtaposition of the victory of Easter Sunday with the Troubles of our own bloody Sundays. Whatever lingering inner conflict I carried from the nice lady at work or the preachers who anguished over the number of unbuttoned buttons on Amy Grant’s album covers, it all crumbled in the face of U2. The band became my unassailable counter-argument: the non-CCM, very mainstream, very loud, and very Christian case-in-point. What I did not know at the time was that the very same tensions I faced here in the US were happening for years as well over there in Ireland, and almost brought the dissolution of U2 long before War ever came to be. To hear the story in real-time, you have to listen to the band’s second album, the one that a lot of people overlook, October. * * * The making of October is the stuff of legend. The band’s proper debut, Boy, occupied a particular space that could not be replicated on a sophomore record: it was a first-person exploration of the end of adolescence. October, then, would have to chart new territory, and its creation would have to compete with the relentless touring of an Irish band trying to make a name for itself around the world. Two particular stories from that creative process stand out. Story One: The band that has improbably maintained its original lineup since 1976 actually broke up during the recording of and touring for October. While in high school, three members of the quartet had become part of a fellowship in Ireland called Shalom. As the band’s success grew, leaders of Shalom came to embody the “secular rock naysayers” of my own youth, and essentially gave the band an ultimatum: It’s either God or this rock music thing. At various times, Edge and Bono quit the band. Larry quit Shalom. U2, on occasion, ceased to exist. The band that I contend has been used by God as part of the faith journey of me and millions of others were dissolved for the perceived purpose of being used by God. Story Two: We’ve all experienced the lost file. You forget to hit “Save,” the computer crashes, and hours’ worth of paragraphs that feel like pieces of your soul are irreparably gone. That’s what happened (in analog form) to Bono. He’d been writing while touring and had a notebook full of lyrics for their next album when, at a tour stop in Portland, it went missing, presumably stolen from his dressing room, never recovered. Back home, the band convened at their former high school, trying to cobble together what was lost before entering the studio. There wasn’t much to go on when it was time to record the album. Bono recalls writing lyrics at the microphone, feeling the pressure of the ticking clock (and the studio rental fee of fifty pounds per hour). Combine these stories and you’ve found the DNA of October. The band has decided that reconciling art, calling, and vocation is possible, even in the world of post-punk music, and they’ve had to rather hastily find the words to express it. To borrow a lyric likely written at the microphone, the band asked, “Where do we go from here? Where to go?” The shouted, wailing answer? “To the foot of He who made me see. To the side of a hill—blood was spilled—we were filled with a love. Jerusalem.” Given all that, what does October actually sound like? It’s glorious. It’s a polished sort of raw, with producer Steve Lillywhite allowing unbridled rock power to coexist with ethereal layers in a way that befits the unfinished feel of the songs. The opener and most well-known track, “Gloria,” fades in. Who fades their album in? Side two opens with the sound of Edge tuning his guitar before Uilleann pipes take over. One song, “Scarlet,” had a single lyric, repeated thrice—“Rejoice”—sung not with raised hands and a Sunday morning smile, but with fortitude and intention. * * * I had a pastor for a time who incorporated a call for evangelism into every single sermon. No matter the topic of Biblical text, he would at some point use it—however tenuously—to motivate us to share our Christian faith with others. You might not say October is evangelistic by nature. While the lyrics do include lines like, “Oh Lord, If I had anything, anything at all, I’d give it to You,” nothing directly implores the listener to turn to Jesus. However, I contend that it’s more evangelistic than some of those sermon applications. People criticize Bono for his earnestness, which is easy to intermingle with hubris, but behind the sunglasses he is, and has at least always seemed, genuine. In his 1981 Hot Press review of the album, Neil McCormick wrote: “’October’ is a Christian LP. People will react to this fact in different ways: snide, disappointed, alienated, unconcerned, overtly happy. I accept it because at the core of U-2 is honesty.” There, on this wonderful album, are the tense realities of early adulthood and the conquer-the-world earnestness of adolescence, and an unabashed, perhaps naïve, determination willing to shout it all to anyone who might be wandering by—not necessarily to proselytize, but to simply express what is bubbling over inside. Few would list October as their favorite U2 album. It’s likely that casual U2 fans have never listened to it. If you look at the list of all the songs U2 has ever played live, only one song from October features in the top forty (“Gloria”). “Is That All?” has never been played live. But I love this record. Rarely is such a swirl of emotion, spirituality, and nerve expressed in such real-time: in chiming electric guitar E-minor chords, in gentle autumnal piano, in a Latin praise chorus, and in an overflowing wail of weather-worn joy. October is not U2’s best album, but U2 would not exist without it.

On my expansive old porch stands a large, ungainly, potted plant. It is a night-blooming cereus (NBC). It is an exotic, meant to be vining up inside a tree in the tropics. I keep it compact—or I wouldn’t be able to keep it. I have had it for decades since I was given a typically indestructible cutting from a plant then decades old. (I carried it home, a trip of weeks, squashed in my suitcase.) I think that this plant is wonderfully ugly! (Partly due to its containment, I realize.) In no orderly pattern it produces skyward stalks, which transition into large, succulent flatnesses which might be leaves. These have nodes along their edges, out of which might come another stalk, another leaf, or… …a tiny reddish sputnik of a bud. That little alien swells slowly, retaining its shade of an angry welt on your skin. It enlarges eventually to the size of your hand. There comes a summer evening when you realize that the massive bud is bending to point upward, and its sepals are starting to stand out from it. (It reminds me a bit of a lion fish!) The time has come. Grab your lawn chair and your flashlight and your camera. Grab your unsuspecting neighbors, if they’ll let you. This will be an event. Snap a pic every five minutes or so. You can’t help it; you can Google any number of videos people have made! But you can’t capture the magic of the event. By morning, I note, the show will be over. Behold! A massive white blossom, the most stunning you have ever seen, opens out to you, like a generous hand, graciously uncloaking its majestic interior of ranks of stamens and a crowning pistil, perfuming the warm summer night! It’s as if the blossom looks you in the eye and says beguilingly, “Here I am!” That blossom opens and somehow invites you in. It’s as if it says, “Welcome to my home.” To which the only appropriate response is, “Whoa-a-a-h . . .” “Oh-h-h-h!” “Ah-h-h-h!” You now are no longer able to see that plant in the same way. In your rapturous encounter you gaze at it with a kind of surprised recognition. “So! It is You!” we might find ourselves saying. And then and there, you give your heart to an ugly plant, to love and cherish as long as you both shall live. For these decades, I have dragged my “NBC” indoors in the fall, and back out in the spring. I have pruned it with apology, adjusted its lighting and feeding, and attended to it continually in hope of other moments of bud glory. I have enthusiastically bestowed cuttings on unsuspecting friends. In all the places I have lived, I have invited neighbors over for the show. (The neighbors I invited most recently actually came back over and sat on my porch again later in the dead of the night, just to watch!) This event of epiphany and encounter typifies human persons’ involvement with the real. Real? What real? might be your first question. By “real,” I mean the things before you, everything beyond you with which it is your privilege to be involved. In my NBC blossoming I am describing that magical place of meeting where you and the real face and touch and encounter one another. I am here to say that this is the arena of the philosophical. You might have thought that philosophy concerns the abstract and universal and inscrutable. I dissent from this. Philosophy concerns you and your involvement with the real, in attuning, understanding and action, at its nearest, felt, and most concrete. Great philosophizing pours forth from the night blooming cereus! Great philosophizing permeates our day to day lives. We may allow it to shape and heal us philosophically. The blossoming of the real shouldn’t be a rare or occasional thing; it typifies—or ought to typify—every touch and seeing. In Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead, Rev. John Ames is an elderly, terminally ill, pastor writing at length to his very young son. Ames’ final exhortation: “Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.” Beauty is the real’s hospitable welcome. We respond in rapture. It attunes us to do so. Esther Lightcap Meek But sadly, we often don’t notice. We objectify, pragmatize, quantify, commodify the real. Or we suspect it, distrust it, disavow it. We “depersonify” it. Or, in a sense even more tragic, we degrade it by according it only spiritual utility: it merely marks some secret meaning, some divinity, hidden behind or within it. We put ourselves in the first person: “I.” We put the real in the third person: “it.” We blind ourselves to its second person in epiphany. The real shows up. It addresses us: “you.” We discount our own “second personhood,” blind to the invited encounter. But it is in the second person that we are meant to be involved with the real. Philosopher D. C. Schindler writes that human persons are “ordered to” communion with the real D. C. Schindler writes—meaning, that is our reason for existence! Human persons are made for communion with the real. We are meant to be lovers of the real. Knowledge, according to Schindler (and me) is intimate contact with reality. Epiphany. The real graciously shows itself. The real manifests in self-revelation. The blossom says, “Here I am!” Encounter. The real addresses you. It has found you and addresses you. To which you respond: “So! It is You!” Philosopher theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar writes that things—the everyday things of the real—self-show (beauty), self-give (goodness), and self-say (truth). There is no such thing as a passive object. All this heightens the gravitas of things; it heightens the gravitas of you. Encounter begins with epiphany—not mine, but that of the real. The real graciously self-shows, opening our eyes. Beauty just is this epiphanic appearing initiated by the real. Beauty is the beguiling “Here I am!” of a real thing. Beauty is the real’s hospitable welcome. We respond in rapture. It attunes us to do so. We respond, following its beckoning, following where it leads. It is giving itself; we give ourselves in response. We long and love to know the real—that is, come to commune with it. Our fidelity to it invites its further disclosure and our deepening understanding. This real opens out into joyously bottomless depths and vistas. “Things can fully manifest themselves in their being only to an intellect that is naturally ordered to being [the real],” Schindler says. Ferdinand Ulrich writes: “What everything in the cosmos seeks, we might say, is an ever deeper Yes to be spoken to it, an affirmation of its being.” The real is asking for our yes. Does this sound fanciful? Gullible? Marginal? This too would be a philosophical assessment. I would have you trim your philosophical sails and reset your course. My 2023 book, Doorway to Artistry, is a hospitable welcome of a book. In it I enact the face to face, second person, epiphany and invited encounter that is our everyday brush with the real. Hospitable welcome is tellingly not something you are satisfied only to hear a report about; you want to have been among those attending the party! Within this encounter, we trace our journey of involvement with the real, from threshold and hearth, through study, garden, workshop and veranda, to feast. This is the unfolding of any discovery we make. It is the unfolding of every relationship. It is also the unfolding of every creative act. The act of artistry is exceptionally attuned to the epiphanic encounter with the real; to be authentic, artistry cannot keep it at bay. Artistry is deeply philosophical: it gets at the “Here I am!” of our epiphanic encounter with the real. You as a human person are philosophical; you also are already artful: you already put things together creatively to produce new or better things. In artistry you attend to the things before you: your materials and skills and situation and guiding maxims. You attend from them in a manner which invites their farther depths of reality. You do this out of a posture of, I will say in the book: noble courtesy. Our noble courtesy reciprocates the welcome which the real has proffered. Again, Schindler: “A sense of beauty demands that we extend courtesy to things. In such a world, things may indeed serve human purposes, but if they do so it is not an abject slavery; rather, they offer themselves for this use in something analogous to a noble freedom in which their own reality preserves its integrity. The service takes the form of a gift gratefully received.” Things call forth from you (from YOU) a reverence, a courtesy, a reciprocated honor, and gratitude, a nobility in your manner toward them. This approach shifts how we look at and engage with the real. It is a shift necessary to our human personhood. It is necessary to our artistry. It is necessary to the real. Welcome to my home.