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by the Rabbit Room Rabbit Room Press’s latest title, “Songs from the Silent Passage,” features essays from an assortment of writers on the influence of Walt Wangerin. One of those writers is Eugene Peterson, and we’re so grateful that his voice is part of this collection. If you’ve heard of Walt Wangerin but haven’t yet encountered his work, this collection of essays is a perfect place to begin. Read on for an excerpt from Peterson’s essay. Chauntecleer and the Pastoral Imagination Reading the Dun Cow novels turned out to be, in retrospect, a significant event in the shaping of my pastoral imagination. After I was ordained and admitted to the company of pastors, I expected to be in conversation with men and women who would be colleagues attentive to the nature of congregation: the beauty of holiness, the care of souls, the craft of preaching. What I found was a “company of shopkeepers,” preoccupied with shopkeepers’ concerns: how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from the competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers would lay out more money. I began to look around for congenial companions. The search was not easy, but help came in the form of a novel, The Book of the Dun Cow , written by Walter Wangerin Jr. It embedded itself in my imagination and along with his subsequent books has continued for nearly forty years to clarify and deepen my understanding and practice of the life of a pastor. What I am writing here is not so much about Wangerin as such but about his considerable influence on my life as a pastor and writer. Geoffrey Chaucer and Walter Wangerin Jr. One of my assignments as a student at Seattle Pacific University in my final year (1954) was to write a weekly opinion column for The Falcon , our student newspaper. In one issue my opening sentence was, “This is the dullest thing since calculus and Chaucer . . .” (I no longer remember “the thing” that I was referring to). I soon got a call from my English professor, who was also advisor to the paper, asking me to come and see her. I showed up and she asked me, “Eugene, have you ever read Chaucer?” I confessed that I had not. She followed up with, “And I assume you know nothing about calculus either?” I admitted my ignorance. Without further comment she turned around, reached for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , and as she handed it to me, said, quite severely it seemed to me, “Read this, and don’t come back until you have read the whole thing.” She was my favorite professor and had always treated me kindly, but by the tone of her voice, I knew I was in trouble. I showed up four days later (it’s a long book) thoroughly chagrined, for those four days had put me in the company of twenty-nine pilgrims on their way to Canterbury who amused themselves on their journey by telling stories—of adventures and trials, some bawdy and some charming, some of moral philosophical reflection, some of tragedy and some of romance. Twenty-three of the pilgrims told stories and only one out of the twenty-three was dull. By this time, her severity had been replaced by her customary kindness. In the years that followed, whenever she read a poem or essay that I had written for a periodical, she wrote a note of appreciation that kept our friendship up-to-date. I also learned from others that while teaching her writing course she sometimes would drop my part in the Chaucer incident into the classroom conversation. Several years later, as a newly ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (UPCUSA), I was given an assignment to develop a new congregation near a small town in Maryland (Bel Air) that was fast becoming a suburb of Baltimore. I was pleased to be asked and, ill-equipped as I was, accompanied by my wife and two-year-old firstborn, embraced my new employment with enthusiasm. There was a burgeoning interest in the church in those years, with experts offering seminars and books exploring the dynamics and procedures for approaching a “generation that knew not Joseph” to get them to listen to the story of Jesus and become part of the body of Christ. It was the early sixties, the Decade of the Death of God. Church attendance was plummeting. Anxiety—among some approaching something more like hysteria—was widespread as the influence of the Christian church seemed to be swiftly eroding while secular humanism was replacing what many had assumed, probably mistakenly, was a “Christian Nation.” Innovations were proposed, desperate applications of tourniquets to staunch the flow of blood from the body of Christ. Churches were modified or designed so they didn’t look like churches. The “church growth” movement got most of the headlines—megachurches that seemed to some of us to be mostly “mega” and very little “church.” Meanwhile the primary reaction of the established, so-called mainline churches in response to the challenge was to initiate strategies for developing new congregations. My denomination was energetically recruiting pastors to implement this particular strategy. I counted myself fortunate to be asked to be in on something fresh and new, challenging and demanding, but still “church.” I understood that my task was to implement a gathering of men and women who would sit still and be quiet long enough to become aware of God’s word and presence in the neighborhood in addition to attending to their own souls. In anticipation of the population growth in the area, my denomination had purchased six acres of farmland two miles from the existing Presbyterian Church, an historic colonial congregation located in the center of the town but landlocked with no room for expansion. It was an aging but still vigorous body of Christ, so instead of relocating the church (to “where the people are”), a frequently employed strategy in those years, they requested the denomination develop another congregation. I was aware, of course, of the advice being handed down by the growing cadre of experts who were telling men and women like me how to counteract the demise of the church by replacing it with something “relevant” to this new post-modern, post-church generation. I attended occasional seminars that seemed promising and read the current books that contained the latest wisdom. But a day came when I read this sentence, written by one of the acclaimed promoters of church renewal: “The size of your parking lot will have a lot more to do with the success of your church than any text you will preach.” That sentence raised a red flag. More and more I sensed that I was being encouraged to develop public relations skills borrowed almost verbatim from the world of business. None of these “mentors” seemed to have anything but a cursory interest in theology or people. Theirs was a mindset obsessed with statistics, programs, and demographics. I found myself immersed in a depersonalized world with no relationships. That’s when I picked up and started reading Walt Wangerin’s novel The Book of the Dun Cow and overnight recovered what I would now name a “pastoral imagination.” I say “recovered” because I had already begun to develop a sense of coherence with congregation and worship, with people and God in the place and circumstances that had been given to me, a place where I would cultivate a sense of the holy in the ordinary. Chaucer and Wangerin entered my story and replaced the experts on relevance that had been boring me to death. You can read the rest of Eugene Peterson’s essay in Songs from the Silent Passage, available in the Rabbit Room Bookstore.

by Leslie E. Thompson As a rule, I don’t take well to the separation of men and women in artmaking. I don’t think that individual sexes hold the keys to a certain set of artistic or personality traits, nor do I believe either have a creative advantage over the other. While this is true, I’m often struck by the impact of women in my life and marvel at the particular perspective they provide that so deeply relates to my own. Perhaps this is why Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter left me with tear-dampened cheeks and a soul-shaken spirit at each reading, while Jayber Crow was simply an enjoyable (albeit, uniquely enjoyable) read. For this reason, I’ve found myself drawn to the Faithful project just released into the world. “Project” hardly begins to cover the footprint of the book, music, live event, eventual podcast—it’s more akin to a movement or concept. At its core, Faithful begins with stories of women in the Bible and invites female artists of all kinds to interact with them. Artists like Amy Grant, Ellie Holcomb, Ginny Owens, Jess Ray, Taylor Leonhardt, Sandra McCracken, Leslie Jordan, and so many others joined forces with writers like Sally Lloyd-Jones, Ann Voskamp, Trillia Newbell, and Ruth Chou Simons to reflect on the Biblical narrative through a female lens—and write about it. The result is an exploration of themes that find their way into the hearts and minds of women throughout generations through song and written word. Faithful began with a series of writing retreats in Nashville’s Art House as participants were given prompts from the Bible of women whose own stories tell us more about the faithfulness of the Creator. Biblical figures like Ruth, Esther, Mary, and Miriam were offered as reflection points. Writers were encouraged to join with musicians and let the miraculous ways of artmaking bring forth something new. Admittedly, some of the authors found themselves feeling unequipped to handle the pressure of writing a song (as the joke was made in the livestream event, “before this, I didn’t know what a ‘bridge’ was…”). Despite their insecurity, their words were invited to take shape not only through song in a recorded album, but also through the written word in the form of the beautifully-bound book that accompanies the project. There’s even a Faithful necklace created in partnership with the ethically-conscious brand ABLE. The passing down of wisdom and truth from generation to generation isn’t unique to a female or male perspective, but I’ve been grateful for the ways it has impacted my own experience as a woman making sense of that which surrounds me. And how wonderful when these themes can be translated into song, story, and art. Faithful defends the honor of telling stories from the female perspective in a world that often either seeks to silence that perspective or can’t fully realize the breadth of its meaning. Our own experiences of God’s faithfulness can galvanize others as the stories of biblical characters spur us on. Faithful defends the honor of telling stories from the female perspective in a world that often either seeks to silence that perspective or can't fully realize the breadth of its meaning. Leslie E. Thompson I found this to be true in my recent history when my husband and I suffered a miscarriage. Through this experience, I found a new perspective of the story of the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. The physical undoings of a pregnancy through miscarriage can bring similar symptoms with weeks of pain, and when I first remembered this story I was moved at the response of Jesus as the woman grabs his cloak. He felt all twelve years of her pain, embarrassment, discouragement, hopelessness—he knew her struggle, and he knew the depth to which she desired healing. My own pain pales in comparison to a twelve-year battle, but Jesus’ response to this woman reminds me of his kindness and grace in my life. The stories we hear in Sunday school become tangible when we experience the human reality they reflect, and the gracious healing of the one who has made us. One doesn’t need to be a woman to realize that there is a deep, rich culture of womanhood in the stories of the Bible. And regardless of what your own culture looked like in church or out of it, we do well to take these stories in mind and amplify those whose voices are hushed in the scriptures, but whose stories speak volumes of what Jesus has done. One such story highlighted on the Faithful record is that of Rahab, who is known in the Old Testament as a prostitute whose aid in the hiding spies sent by Joshua to investigate Jericho resulted in a victory for the Israelites. The story is short, as is often the case with women in the Bible, but mention of Rahab is made in Hebrews as an example of a person of faith and good works, and—perhaps most notable—Rahab shows up in the lineage of Christ as the mother of Boaz. From these small bits in scripture, the song “Rahab’s Lullaby (God Above, God Below)” was created. The Faithful livestream event allowed the writers to share their conversation in the co-writing room, and the comment was made that Rahab surely sang to her son about the goodness of God as her family was spared due to her faithfulness. The body of Christ is fully realized in men and women alike, and while traits are found across the male/female divide, there is a comfort in hearing voices with like-but-unique-timbres singing and telling of uncertainty, perseverance, joy, and ultimately, hope. Throughout the Faithful project, hope is put on full display. Sally Lloyd-Jones offers a particularly beautiful poem in the book inspired by the personhood of Eve: Eve, you’re not the worst of us. You’re just the first of us. —Sally Lloyd-Jones In recent years, the illustration of a pregnant Mary introducing her swollen belly to a downcast Eve has made its rounds on social media. The piece comes from Sister Grace Remington from the Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey in Iowa. The gospel brings together in a single image two characters separated by thousands of years and an entire Testament in the Bible. Eve holds the end of the string that runs throughout the biblical narrative and is eventually placed in the hands of a young Mary—who surely learned of Eve, the woman who took and ate and set forth the motion of God’s great plan of redemption. Mary must have considered Eve and the purpose of that story in her own life. “Mary & Eve” by Scott Erickson, based off of Sister Grace Remington’s original. In the same way, we can find great meaning and purpose by reading about those who have gone before us and whose characters are on display in the Scriptures. And as God continues to work his plan of rescue, we build upon those stories in hope for a day when we can meet these women in the flesh, as God’s New Earth brings life for all eternity. Sally ends her poem with this: At the end of time, Eve, I see you at the Wedding feast of the Lamb. When everything sad will come untrue… And as we sit together at His table, Eve, I hear Him say with tears and great laughter—  Take,  And eat! —Sally Lloyd-Jones ] The album is available now wherever you find your music. Find the book and all other information at faithfulproject.com .

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. In this 100th episode of The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and producer Drew Miller play back and discuss favorite moments from the first 99 episodes, as identified by listeners. Click here to listen to the 100th episode of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by Mark Meynell Going viral is, I would imagine, a standard goal of most professional photographers. A brief glance at his Twitter feed suggests that this happens fairly frequently to Jonathan Brady, a British photojournalist for the Press Association. Well, it happened again recently and it’s obvious why. For it is Brady who gets the credit for what had to be the image of an extraordinary week in an extraordinary season: the Queen sitting alone at the funeral of Prince Philip. It is one of those pictures that doesn’t merely capture a unique moment but somehow manages to communicate meaning at many different levels simultaneously. If it weren’t such a sombre occasion, it would be serendipitous. In case you’re anxious, my purpose here is not to wax lyrical about the advantages of constitutional monarchy over other forms such as executive presidencies, say. That would be entirely superfluous because they’re completely and utterly obvious to all the world. Instead, my aim is to meander through what makes the image itself so powerful. Now, before I get uncharacteristically overcharged (for a stuffed-shirted Englishman, that is), just consider the technical prowess of the photograph’s composition. This will have been partly achieved through cropping during the editing process undoubtedly, but the ingredients all had to be in place to make that possible. We’re in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, the castle’s private chapel. It is a stunning medieval masterpiece, so it would take a perverse kind of genius to make it anything other than photogenic! So Brady has that advantage at least. But consider the lines in his image. Start with the unmissable diagonals , formed by the parallel lines of the pews and memorial wall plaques. If you extend them, they would eventually converge in the far distance, just as in an Old Master landscape that has thoroughly mastered perspective. One of Claude Lorrain’s classical scenes , perhaps. But note where these lines draw the eye. Not at some invisible point in infinity, but at their widest point on the left; we are quite naturally drawn back to the lone figure in the pews. Or take the rule-of-thirds , one of the basic techniques for image composition, in painting, photography and cinema. Apply lines at a third and two-thirds of the way along the vertical and horizontal axes and the image is divided into nine segments (as in tic-tac-toe, or noughts-and-crosses as we call it over here). Lo and behold, the photo’s subject fits perfectly into one of those segments. Finally, throw in central lines to both axes and what do you find? The top of the figure’s mask and the tip of her nose lie on that horizontal line precisely. That is entirely apt since when chatting with a friend, we naturally focus on the centre of their face. Even though in this instance she is looking into the middle distance, the fact of the centre of her face falling on the central line gives the viewer an unconscious connection. Now, of course, this is all very clinical. Because this is not just any lone figure in any old building. It’s the Queen! Sitting alone at the funeral of her husband of 74 years, just two months before his 100th birthday and days before her own 95th. For all the incongruities and occasional absurdities of monarchies in the twenty-first century, despite the vast wealth, heritage and privileges that it has brought the Windsor family—incidentally, that’s an artificial name created during World War I because their true surname, inherited from Queen Victoria’s German husband Prince Albert, should be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha—this is a painful, and indeed very human, scene. Even the most ardent republicans (lower case ‘r’!) can look beyond all the flummery and baggage to see that. It is profoundly poignant. Stories about Prince Philip have abounded in recent days, things that few knew and most had no right to know. He could be controversial at times, some of his views might leave something to be desired, while addicts of Netflix’s The Crown might presume confidence about all kinds of biographical details. (Never forget it’s fictionalised!) But of the many remarkable things about the Duke of Edinburgh, it was his unwavering commitment to duty and service that stood out. Which meant, in particular, serving his wife, often a couple of paces behind her. For seven and half decades. It takes a man of rare calibre and security (still) to handle that. No wonder she called him her ‘strength and stay’. And now she’s alone, an aloneness that only the widowed truly know. Yet for the Queen it brings a unique burden because if you think about it, she has never known what it is to be the monarch without her husband beside her. They had been married for five years already when her father George VI died. The camera does lie, as we all should know. I admit to a degree of outrage that she should be left all alone like this at such a painful moment, assuming that it was the result of Covid-distancing rules. In actual fact, Brady froze her total isolation in those pews from just a passing moment; they would fill up (albeit with necessary spaces) within minutes. But you would never know that from the photo. Despite that—or perhaps even because of that—this viral image communicated a profoundly relatable truth. Yes—she really is alone now, humanly speaking. At least two British newspaper cartoonists (Peter Brookes in The Times and Christian Adams in the Evening Standard ) sought to convey the same thought (see below). But Brady’s photograph makes the point far more persuasively. It requires no captions nor additional images. She must have sat in that chapel thousands of times over her long life. Moreover, this was hardly the first time she’d had to wear funeral black from head to toe there. But it was certainly the first to do so in that universal icon of the pandemic, a face mask. This is by no means the first pandemic of human history. Yet it is the first in which the whole of humanity has battled the virus, (often defeating it, but too often being defeated by it), while simultaneously being kept informed about that battle. Various sites provide minute-by-minute statistical updates of the global state of play. We can each now doom-scroll to our heart’s discontent. All seven billion of us have been affected by COVID-19, and many of us have lost loved ones and precious friends to that contemptible microbe. Prince Philip was not killed by COVID, of course; but his final months were surely dominated by its presence. So at his funeral, attendance was restricted to only thirty close family while his beloved wife sat masked. And distanced. There is a cruel irony about that. Many commentators have observed that for constitutional monarchy to ‘work,’ it requires an indefinable brew of magic and mystery, particularly around the monarch herself. She must be politically neutral, for example (which is why she never gives interviews). How else can she represent everybody? She needs to be unlike the rest of us, in some ways; there needs to be that degree of distance from us ordinary citizens on the street (and by the way, we are citizens now, not ‘subjects’!). So, the less we know, the more effective the system, something which makes life for the monarchy increasingly fraught in the era of 24/7 news cycles. The media have reduced, and at times eroded, that distance altogether. The ensuing scenes are not always pretty. This will no doubt seem very alien to observers in the States and elsewhere. A quirky legacy of history, perhaps, only good to keep tourism and tabloids in business. But I found myself profoundly moved, perhaps unexpectedly. So here is the strangest thing, made all the stranger for it being conveyed through one of the most extraordinary and unique people in history: in art as in life, the more specific and personal an experience might be, the more universally it resonates. Mark Meynell I love my country as I hope you do yours. Yet living for a few years as a child in Asia, working in East Africa between 2001 and 2005, and now having a travelling job focused primarily in Eastern Europe, radically affects my perspectives. One is that I simply cannot be a nationalist. Not as a Christian, not as a modern citizen. That just makes no sense to me. I grew to appreciate and love the UK while being abroad; to that extent, I guess you could say I’m a patriot. But I also grew to love many other places and people too, because it was obvious to me that while they had characteristics, habits and traditions that were different from ours certainly, some were far better! As George Bernard Shaw brilliantly put it, “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…” So even if my feelings surrounding this image were somehow shaped by patriotism, that did not lie at the heart of it. Because, for me as a pastor, I couldn’t help but see beyond the titles and splendour, the history and the scandals. For as Jonathan Brady’s photograph showed us, here was a person experiencing realities that every single one of us must face. We witnessed a monarch who was truly one of us. She sits slightly hunched, subdued and sombre, and perhaps a little scared (just as C. S. Lewis articulated in A Grief Observed ). We can barely see her eyes; they’re like dark pinpricks, staring ahead at nothing in particular, staring into a Philip-less future. It is so sad. And human. So here is the strangest thing, made all the stranger for it being conveyed through one of the most extraordinary and unique people in history: in art as in life, the more specific and personal an experience might be, the more universally it resonates. Conversely, the more generalities we grope for in the hope of building bridges with the many, the fewer connections we actually make. Such generalities leave us cold. It is precisely the uniqueness of another’s experience that makes it so precious. And universal. For here is grief. But I can’t leave it there. Both the Queen and Prince Philip shared a profound faith in Christ. This funeral, for all its pain and sadness, therefore, does not constitute an eternal farewell, but a hope-filled Au Revoir (French for ‘until the next time’). So, let us close with the weighty words of a clerical poet, one who himself knew the mixed blessing of being favoured by one of Elizabeth II’s ancestors: John Donne, pressed into ordination by James I (aka James VI of Scotland). Because of Christ, we can all know this to be true as well. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee  Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;  For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow  Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.  From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,  Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,  And soonest our best men with thee do go,  Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.  Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,  And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,  And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well  And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?  One short sleep past, we wake eternally  And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. —John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”

by Mark Meynell As Andrew reminded us in a piece posted just recently , Easter Sunday is when it’s all just getting started. It’s no accident that the Easter season in the church calendar lasts for several weeks. So as we get back into the swing of another series of 5&1 posts, I feel no embarrassment in starting with the theme. This is because that Sunday morning in Palestine triggered the greatest revolution the world has ever known. And it’s not done yet… There’s such a vast treasury of music for and about the season, for the simple reason that the Church (in all her different manifestations during the last millennium) has been the single most significant patron of composers and musicians, bar none. With Easter being so fundamental to the faith, it’s no wonder that it became an aural focal point. So, it’s been painful to make selections! You will undoubtedly have your favourites, perhaps drawn from Handel’s Messiah , Bach’s B Minor Mass or Easter Oratorio , and Vaughan-Williams’ 5 Mystical Songs . Instead, I’ve tried to pick out several choral wonders which will be less familiar. Haec Dies (‘This day’) William Byrd (?1543-1623, English) Voces8 Byrd was a composer whose genius enabled him to weather the stormy uncertainties of the English Reformation like his teacher and mentor Thomas Tallis. It seems that he actually became a Roman Catholic at a time when to do so was increasingly regarded as treacherous (the Pope declared in 1570 that Catholics had no obligation to swear allegiance to Elizabeth I since she was ‘the pretended Queen of England’ and excommunicated as a heretic). Byrd was one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance and this concise anthem is one I always loved singing. It is simply a setting of the Latin version of Psalm 118:24 but is often sung at Easter. After all, this is the day that only the Lord could make, as Lord both of Creation and Redemption. The different voices come in one by one, rather like bells peeling for Easter morning. Then the Exultemus (let us rejoice) gets the toes tapping, seeming to dare us to jump to our feet for a jolly jig. This is deep joy, Renaissance-style! Translation: This is the day the Lord has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia, alleluia. 2. O Dulce Lignum (O Sweet Wood) from Passion & Resurrection Ēriks Ešenvalds (1977- , Latvian) Hannah Consenz (soprano), Ethan Sperry (conductor) Portland State University Chamber Choir, Portland State University String Ensemble Four centuries later, our subject is identical but the sound-world light years away. Ešenvalds spent his first growing up in the USSR state of Latvia, but he studied at the Latvian Baptist Seminary (he’s still very committed to his Baptist church) and later at the Latvian Academy of Music. He is now one of the most sought-after and celebrated choral composers and I’m on the edge of my seat every time I hear of a new work from his pen. This track is the final section in a four-part work for soloists, choir and strings called Passion and Resurrection . It opens with a soprano solo, in Latin, accompanied only by the reverberations around her. It is stark, haunting and mysterious. We don’t really know where we are. Unexpectedly, the strings join her, with the choir quietly chanting. If anything, this deepens the mystery but it is utterly beguiling. After a couple of minutes, there is a brief pause; before a change of tone. The strings now sound cinematic, heightening our sense of expectation. The choir then sing in English and matters quickly escalate to the triumphant repetition of ‘The Lord is Risen!’ The chanting returns—but it is now what is going on. The early mystery of the piece was like the pre-dawn mist in that Jerusalem cemetery of old, the Latin solo a meditation on the horrors of Friday. It is a dialogue first between the two angels and Mary (Mariam in the original Greek) and then, miraculously, not the gardener but the Lord himself. The choir sings a gentle, rocking address to her, ‘Mariam.’ Her response (‘Rabboni’) is so tender and achingly beautiful. The sort of music that you cry happy tears to. 3. Christus Vincit Sir James Macmillan (1959- , Scottish) Choir of New College, Oxford, Edward Higginbottom (cond.) Another fairly contemporary piece now. We’ve already encountered Macmillan in the 5&1s. In the Advent list , his extraordinary Percussion Concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel was the long piece. We’re at the other end of the musical spectrum now, with this 6-minute miniature for unaccompanied (or ‘a capella’ ) choir. The text is drawn from 12th century ‘Worcester Acclamations’, Christus vincit , and Macmillan wrote it for the choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. This explains the meditative pace, composed specifically to allow for the vast acoustics of Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece. On first hearing, it perhaps doesn’t sound especially triumphant. But there is so much going on in it, with its power growing with each listen. There is a dialogue between the choir and a very demanding soprano solo (or in this recording, treble solo) that seems to float in the stratosphere far above, with unsettling leaps (right up to a top B, two octaves above middle C which Macmillan insists should be quiet!) and haunting, meandering lines. What I admire especially about this piece, however, is that it plots a different part from shouts of Easter joy and triumph. Those, of course, have their place. But the approach here is more settled, a meditation on deep, unwavering convictions which give grounds for hope, especially for a troubled world in which Christ does not seem to rule at times. This piece is insistent, convinced in what is true. That makes the final Alleluias all the more wondrous. 4. God is Gone Up (Op. 27, No. 2) Gerald Finzi (1901-1956, English) Christopher Whitton (organ), Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, Christopher Robinson (cond.) The eagle-eyed will have noticed that, in actual fact, the Easter season ended yesterday! We have had several weeks of joyful celebration of the living Saviour, but yesterday was Ascension Day (in the western church calendar; Eastern Orthodoxy has it on June 10th this year). So here is a piece that celebrates that moment, almost comical as the disciples gormlessly gawp upwards in their initial confusion. Gerald Finzi was a composer known for the ‘Englishness’ of his music, a protégé of the likes of the conductor Sir Adrian Boult and composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams (who helped him get a job teaching at London’s Royal Academy of Music). He hated London, though, and with his young family moved to the West Country, where he composed and grew apples! He is much loved for his choral works especially, many of which have become English cathedral staples (although you shouldn’t miss his Shakespeare songs and clarinet music). The irony of all this is that Finzi was actually of Italian and Jewish descent and was agnostic in religious matters. This didn’t hold him back—and this short anthem is a glorious reminder of the triumph of Ascension Day. 5. Easter Hymn (“Inneggiamo, il Signor non è morto”) and Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana (1890) Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945, Italian) Agnes Baltsa (soprano), Vera Baniewicz (contralto), Philharmonia Orchestra, Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Giuseppe Sinopoli (cond.) Time now to flee the frigid wastes of northern Europe and relish some Mediterranean sun and melodrama. Time now for some Italian opera. Easter is not regularly featured on the operatic stage, because the themes of opera tend more to revolve around passionate loves and jealousies rather than the Christ’s passion and empty tomb. The main exception would be Wagner’s Parsifal . But there is also this 1-act gem, an opera that took the world by storm when it was entered into a competition in 1890. It manages to combine both forms of passion! Based on a short story and play called Cavalleria rusticana (‘rustic chivalry’) by Giovanni Verga, Mascagni won first prize, having to take forty curtain calls! The action takes place one Easter morning in a Sicilian village square and revolves around a classic love triangle. Santuzza is a young girl who has been seduced by a soldier Turiddu, even though the latter is still in love with his former fiancée Lola (who married some other bloke while Turiddu was on military service). All a bit of a mess, frankly. But the backdrop is the Easter service taking place in the church behind, a fact that serves to expose the religious hypocrisies in the community as well as the repercussions of Turiddu’s behaviour. Santuzza is broken and feels unworthy, so is reluctant to go in. She asks Lucia to pray for her as she is sympathetic to her plight (despite being Turiddu’s mother). So, these two women sing while the church is filled with a glorious Easter hymn. After that, I could hardly leave out the sheer gorgeousness of the Intermezzo , the opera’s most famous bit, which accompanies the villagers as they leave the square. Italian romanticism at its highest! 5th Movement (Im Tempo des Scherzos / In the tempo of the scherzo) from Symphony No. 2, The ‘Resurrection’ (1895) Gustav Mahler (1860-1911, Austrian) Berlin Philharmonic, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Sir Simon Rattle (cond.) Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for musical G-forces like you’ve never heard before. We have not encountered Mahler on our 5&1 journey before now but it has to happen at some point. The title of his majestic second symphony is a bit of a clue for why it must appear now. Yes, it comes as the one major piece of the 5&1, for the simple reason that it lasts half an hour. But it is itself only the fifth movement! The whole work lasts a gob-smacking 90 minutes. I still haven’t ever heard it live but it is overwhelming because there is never a dull moment. Glorious! Mahler worked on it for six years and it quickly became one of his most popular compositions. It marked the first time he explicitly expressed his fascination and passion for questions of transcendence and the afterlife. He had been at a funeral of a close friend in which he heard some verses by Friederich Klopstock. He later said, ‘it struck me like lightning’. He set these words to music, adding several more verses of his own. The movement is complex (unsurprisingly). But it opens with an orchestral cry of despair (drawn from the third movement) and then develops into what he called ‘the march of the dead’, culminating in ‘a Great Summons’ on the horns. Then the choir comes in, taking the Klopstock/Mahler text verse by verse. As if the sound couldn’t get bigger, Mahler throws in parts for an organ and church bells (which he purchased specially for performances). He would later write, ‘The increasing tension, working up to the final climax, is so tremendous that I don’t know myself, now that it is over, how I ever came to write it.’

Editor's Note: Part of  Mark Meynell's 5&1 series on classical music . Taking a different theme each post, the 5&1 series offers five short pieces (or extracts) followed by one more substantial work. by Mark Meynell Fairy tales are a serious business. In fact, they're almost too serious for children, which is probably why children of all ages adore them. Tolkien accepted the point made by the great fairy tale anthologist Andrew Lang: "He who would enter into the Kingdom of Faërie should have the heart of a little child." However, he was adamant that while this entailed some aspects of childhood (like innocence or wonder), it should never imply childishness. "It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality." (From On Fairy-stories) With such potential for drama and danger, it is then no surprise that fairy tales have inspired composers. To get us in the mood, here's a little Humperdinck (no, not the British crooner who stole his name). Stop, Hocus pocus (Act III, Hansel & Gretel, 1893) Engelbert Humperdinck (1853-1921, German) Jane Henschel (Witch), Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras (cond.) Hansel & Gretel is one of better known of the mediaeval stories collected by the German Brothers Grimm. It contains so many of the archetypes we love: abandoned children impoverished by famine, brooding forests, cannibalistic witches, spells, and treasure. So here is a tiny clip from Humperdinck's beloved Christmas opera. Be afraid... Fun fact: the composer Richard Strauss conducted the première in 1893! 1. The Procession of the Fairy Tales (#22 Sleeping Beauty, 1889, Op. 66) Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, (1840-1893, Russian) Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Mark Ermler (cond.) The roots of the Sleeping Beauty stories are probably French, and they clearly chime with the mediaeval tradition of chivalry and courtly love. Various French writers retold the story (like Charles Perrault in the 17th century), as, of course, did the Brothers Grimm. So when Tchaikovsky was commissioned by the St Petersburg Theatres to write another ballet (after his first, Swan Lake , in 1875), he jumped at the chance to set it. These ballets are now two of the most popular in the repertoire (despite Sleeping Beauty lasting nearly 4 hours!) Forces of good and evil compete throughout the story, the evil fairy Carabosse casting a spell on Princess Aurora as a result of not receiving an invitation to her christening. She will prick her finger while spinning thread at 16 and die. The good Lilac Fairy tries to reverse it, but manages only to make her sleep for 100 years. After which a handsome prince will kiss her... By this section, the tensions have more or less resolved and we are heading to the grandeur of the royal wedding of Aurora to her Prince. Here, various fairy tale characters assemble in a grand march to play their part in the celebrations. 2. Le jardin féerique (from Ma mère l'oye) Maurice Ravel (1875-1937, French) Steven Osborne, Paul Lewis (piano duet) A very different mood now. The sharp-eyed will have spotted that this piece has appeared before (in the Calls of the Birds ). However, in my defence, this is the first repeat of the entire 5&1 series, and this is a very different arrangement. Ma Mère L'Oye (Mother Goose) was in fact originally conceived by Ravel as a piano duet; it is scored for 'four hands' meaning two performers at one piano rather than on a piano each. This is the last of five movements, translated 'The Fairy Garden', but unlike the previous ones, its origins are unknown. It opens with slow, measured paces, as if we have just set foot in the garden and begin to explore. It gradually gains colour and detail, although the pace is unwavering. About half way through, the harmonies start shifting and it builds up into the most glorious climax, with glissandos (rapid slides) at the top, as if we're now surrounded by butterfly-like fairies. 3. Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (Op. 28, 1894/5) Richard Strauss (1864-1949, German) Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly (cond.) We're back in medieval Germany now and follow the exploits of that classic prankster and all-round cheeky-chappie, Till Eulenspiegel. His surname literally means Owl-mirror, but in certain dialects it has rather more dubious connotations. Put it this way: a fair number of his pranks concern ... er ... excrement. Strauss composed this tone poem (a short orchestral piece intentionally depicting a painting or narrative) only a year after conducting the Humperdinck première, so perhaps that inspired him to mine fairy tales too. In only 15 action-packed and joyful minutes, we accompany Till's adventures as he rides from fields to towns, upsetting market stalls, jeering at pompous clergy and academics, flirting with adoring girls. He is given his own motifs that are repeated at various points, the first one on the horns conveying his winking humour. However, he cannot be allowed to get away with this mayhem indefinitely, poor chap, and so he has his eventual comeuppance. He is tried and hanged for his crimes, all of which is depicted in the score. But his spirit lives on because, after all, Till's demise hardly resulted in the cessation once and for all of such prankery! 4. 'Auf Einer Burg' (#7, Liederkreis, Op. 39) Robert Schumann (1810-1856, German) Matthias Goerne (baritone.) & Eric Schneider (piano) Schumann was a troubled and broken soul, sustained above all by the devotion of his truly remarkable wife Clara (herself a brilliant composer in her own right). He suffered from bouts of dark mental anguish, but out of this he could still create music of the most sublime depths and simplicity. 1840 became what he termed 'his year of song' and this number comes from a song cycle (the literal translation of Liederkreis ) of poetry settings depicting the landscape, in true Romantic fashion. In a Castle was written by a contemporary, aristocratic man of letters, Joseph von Eichendorff. The song is sedate, offering ample space to conjure up the scene in our minds. The piano accompaniment is sparse while the melody is almost childishly simple. It's not going to fire up the adrenaline; this is a slow burn. But for those with ears to hear, there are startling subtleties to send shivers down any spine. The original poem had four stanzas, but Schumann sets them in pairs. On occasion, the piano seems marginally out of harmonic sync with the singer, but listen out for the steady development of intensity from lines 5 and 13. Then, on the words Jahre (years) and munter (merrily) he sets a deliberate, if muted, dissonance (the singer's top C clashes with the piano's left-hand D). For we certainly don't expect the the knight to be centuries-old, while the musicians' merriment is enitrely out of keeping with the devastating final word. Not all fairy tales get a 'happy ever after'. 5. Hello, Little Girl  (from Into the Woods) Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021, American) Robert Westenberg (Wolf) & Danielle Ferland (Red Riding Hood), Original Cast NB clip is from the 2017 movie with Johnny Depp as the Wolf (whereas the playlist is of original cast) Chesterton wrote, "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed." Tolkien once said "A safe fairy tale is untrue to all worlds." For the fairy tale to work, the dangers must be real. Stephen Sondheim was clearly enjoying himself when combined a medley of Grimms' fairy tales in his 1987 musical Into the Woods . In this clip, Little Red Riding Hood comes face-to-face with her terrifying antagonist. It's unnerving how many child-eating horrors live in German forests! But it does permit Sondheim to relish the salivating, predatory wolf and contrast it with the bright yet canny innocence of the little girl. Brilliant! The Firebird  (1910) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971, Russian/American) Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, Charles Dutoit (cond.) In folklore common to many Slavic countries, heroes are often given the almost impossible quest to retrieve a Firebird's feather. No it's neithert r a car, nor a browser, but a magnificent creature whose stunning plumage has the brightness and intensity of flames. A single feather emits sufficient light to fill a great hall (obviously). The version that the Russian emigré composer Stravinsky used for Diaghilev's commission (for his Parisian-founded company Les Ballets Russes) , imagines the Firebird as a female human/bird hybrid. Prince Ivan captures her, but to reward his willingness to release her, she grants him a feather. This is just as well because he subsequently encounters the dastardly but immortal Kaschei who has kidnapped thirteen princesses, no less. What a complete rotter! But because Prince Ivan possesses the feather (and obviously knows how to use it), he defeats Kaschei without killing him. Thus the princesses are liberated! Hurrah! Thank goodness there was. a dashing prince on hand (plus feather). Naturally, Ivan marries the most beautiful and this is something about which she was undoubtedly delighted. The ballet lasts around 45 minutes and contains gorgeous melodies with swooping strings and romantic tension. Until Kaschei appears in the 11th movement, it feels much more like the great Russian works of the Nineteenth Century than other, modernist works for which Stravinsky is famous. But the music builds to bring the archetypal battle of good and evil to its thrilling conclusion. Epic! Mark Meynell is the Director (Europe and Caribbean) of Langham Preaching. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1997 serving in several places including 9 years at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, (during which he also served as a part-time government chaplain). Prior to that, he taught at a small seminary in Kampala, Uganda, for four years. Since 2019, he has helped to bring Hutchmoot to the UK and in 2022 completed a Doctor of Ministry (at Covenant Theological Seminary, St Louis) researching the place of the arts in cultural apologetics. Mark and his wife, Rachel, have two grown-up children, and they live in Maidenhead, Berkshire. If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

by the Rabbit Room In Season Two of The Artist’s Creed, Steve Guthrie and Drew Miller explore the relationship between the sounding world and the Holy Spirit, asking what we can learn about God through music, speech, breath, and voice. In this fifth episode, Steve and Drew discuss what it means for God to “speak through” us, the divine dignifying of the human voice, the unique character of particular musical instruments, the multiplicity of voices in the four gospels, and much more. Tune in every Wednesday at RabbitRoom.com/podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 5: “The Preposition of Love.” And click here to read “Spirit & Sound, Part 5: The Preposition of Love,”  which serves as the baseline for this conversation. Transcripts are available for The Artist’s Creed. Click here to access them.

by the Rabbit Room We are so excited to announce Opening Week at North Wind Manor: a 4-day celebration (July 13th-16th) of the Rabbit Room’s newly rebuilt community space through story, music, art, and community. It’s just the beginning of what we hope will be a continual calendar of events aimed at nourishing Christ-centered communities for the life of the world. We hope you can join us for this exciting week of events! Here’s the run-down on all that we have in store for you. Tuesday: The Local Show The Local Show is the Rabbit Room’s ongoing songwriters’ round show. Previously held at The Well Coffeehouse, we are now pleased to present the concert live from North Wind Manor! Each show features a new line-up of some of Nashville’s best singers and songwriters. But what makes the Local Show special is that the players aren’t just great musicians, they are great friends. The show is one way in which we incarnate the Rabbit Room community, and you’re invited to join the fun. So in celebration of music, we will host the Local Show on Tuesday night, featuring Andrew Peterson , The Arcadian Wild , Buddy Greene , Ron Block , and Jeff Taylor . Click here to reserve your spot at the Local Show. Wednesday Afternoon: Art Gallery Open House Stop by anytime between 10am and 4pm on Wednesday, July 14th to see a variety of art curated by painter Jamin Still . No ticket required for this one! Wednesday Evening: Art Talk with Russ Ramsey In celebration of art, we’ve invited pastor, author, and art enthusiast Russ Ramsey to speak about the work of American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner. Click here to reserve your spot at the Art Talk. Thursday: Storytellers’ Night In celebration of story, we will host a Storytellers’ Night on Thursday night. We’ve invited authors Douglas McKelvey , Andrew Peterson , Pete Peterson , Jonathan Rogers , Helena Sorensen , and Jennifer Trafton to read short stories and excerpts of their works as we gather together. Click here to reserve your spot at Storytellers’ Night. Friday: Film Night And finally, Friday night is Film Night at North Wind Manor. Films combine all four core elements of the Rabbit Room’s mission and purview: story, music, art, and community. For North Wind Manor Opening Week, we will be hosting a film night followed by a moderator-led group discussion about the film. Popcorn shall abound! We can’t reveal the name of the film. However, so you can plan appropriately, it is rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and a rude gesture. Click here to reserve your spot at Film Night. We want events at North Wind Manor to be a gift to the community, so registration is free! If you would like to help support the grand opening and other ongoing events, you can give directly to the North Wind Manor fund , or consider becoming a Rabbit Room member . Everything listed here is only the beginning—we can’t wait to host more life-giving events all throughout the year at North Wind Manor. If you want to be the first to hear about new event announcements, sign up for our email list . P.S. We encourage you to choose just one or two events to attend out of the four that are listed here—we want to do everything we can to allow as many different people to gather at the Manor during Opening Week as possible, and space is limited. Thank you!

by the Rabbit Room In Season Two of The Artist’s Creed, Steve Guthrie and Drew Miller explore the relationship between the sounding world and the Holy Spirit, asking what we can learn about God through music, speech, breath, and voice. In this final episode of Season Two, Steve and Drew discuss the relative novelty of reading silently, our text-oriented society, the inward connotations of “spirituality,” recommendations for incorporating the “out-loud-ness” of scripture into spiritual practices, and much more. Tune in every Wednesday at RabbitRoom.com/podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 6: “The Man Who Read with His Mouth Closed (And the Spirit Who Didn’t).” And click here to read “Spirit & Sound, Part 6: The Man Who Read with His Mouth Closed (And the Spirit Who Didn’t),”  which serves as the baseline for this conversation. Transcripts are available for The Artist’s Creed. Click here to access them.

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan is joined by Andrew Osenga for the third installment of his special summer series, “Sad Stories Told for Laughs,” in which writers speak of their public humiliations for your edification and entertainment. Andrew Osenga is a singer-songwriter, an artist & repertoire director, and the host of the podcast The Pivot: Stories of People Who Have Made a Change. In this installment of Sad Stories Told for Laughs, Andrew talks about performing to empty seats, losing a toe, and playing a music festival organized by a money launderer. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 25 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by the Rabbit Room With memories of Opening Week fresh in our minds, we’re excited to announce more free events at North Wind Manor throughout the month of August! Next month, North Wind Manor will be hosting a lecture by Steve Guthrie on the relationship between human and divine creativity, a live filming of The Habit Podcast featuring Don Chaffer, and a live filming of The Molehill Podcast. Read on for more information. North Wind Manor Lectures: Steve Guthrie (August 10th) Like most Christians, I pray for God’s help in my creative work—when I am writing an article, for instance, or giving a talk. But, if God were to answer those prayers, what would that answer look like? Does God do everything while I just get out of the way? Does God do half the work and leave the other half to me (maybe writing the odd numbered pages and leaving me to write the evens)? Or did God just give me a dollop of something called “talent” or “ability” at the beginning of my life, and now it’s up to me to make something out of it? In short, who’s hand “holds the pen”? How should we think about the relationship between God’s creating, and our own? This talk, which was the keynote address at a recent National Convention of the Lilly Network of Church-related Colleges and Universities, will offer a picture of making that leaves room for both God’s activity and our own. —Steve Guthrie The Habit Podcast LIVE: Sad Stories Told for Laughs with Don Chaffer (August 24th) The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. In this episode, Jonathan will be joined by writer and musician Don Chaffer for a special edition of his summer series, “Sad Stories Told for Laughs.” The Molehill Podcast LIVE (September 1st) The Molehill Podcast is an audio anthology of treasured writings, read aloud by the writers themselves, hosted by Drew Miller. Each episode features poetry, stories, and shenanigans, from dubious facts and words of befuddlement to original house music by Zach & Maggie . More details about this particular episode of The Molehill Podcast to come. We want events at North Wind Manor to be a gift to the community, so registration is free! If you would like to help support ongoing events, you can give directly to the North Wind Manor fund , or consider becoming a Rabbit Room member . We’re just getting started with live events at the Manor, and we can’t wait to share with you more of our plans for the rest of the year. Stay tuned for news and updates, and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon.

by the Rabbit Room We’re so excited to announce many more session leaders and musicians who will be joining us at Hutchmoot: Homebound 2021. And since it’s quite a long list of names, we found that the only suitable way to share them would be in classic summer-music-festival-fashion. Drumroll, please! As many names as you see here, there are yet more guests who will be joining us—be on the lookout for another announcement including all visual artists and more. Rabbit Room Members, Guess What! We’ll have some fun, special Hutchmoot content for members again this year! As for what it is? You’ll just have to wait—or become a member—to find out. If you want to learn more about what membership means you can read about it on the blog or on our Become a Member page .

by Ben Palpant If his name had been Tommy or Jack, this story wouldn’t need much explanation. And if it were normal for a doctor’s son to play with hospital patients, then I wouldn’t need to explain why I played Legos with Losokoi. The only normal thing about the situation was my motivation for playing with him day after day. He was a grateful kid. That, my friends, is a universal magnet. And I never saw him ungrateful even up to his death. But I get ahead of myself. I spent the formative years of my childhood in Kenya, Africa where my father was the only physician in a rural hospital. My mother would visit the patients to pray for them, and what would be more natural than to drag her children along? She made me bring my bag of legos along to play with any children who might need some friendship. I don’t remember enjoying the experience very much—largely because I hated the sight of suffering, and the smell of Betadyne mixed with human sweat made me gag—but Losokoi was different. His smile stands out in my memory more than anything else. Dazzling teeth. A spark of light shining in his eyes. When he smiled at me, I felt like an old friend of his, beloved and longed for and finally reunited after a long separation even though we were both only eight years old and we had just met. I remember, too, his quiet spirit and the way his whole body—eyes, mouth, even the slow gesticulation of his hands—exuded gratitude. When he said thank you , it was almost an unnecessary redundancy. He had already been thanking me all along. All this remained so strongly with me after his death that I forgot the details of his suffering and had to ask dad many years later. Losokoi suffered from Tuberculosis of the brain. He was brought from an outlying tribe. His body had decayed to such a degree that bed sores developed. The hospital staff had to roll him periodically to keep the pustules from peeling away, but they couldn’t keep up. His short stay in the hospital was an agonizing one, but all I can remember is his radiance. He did not obsess over the questions, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” He just expressed gratitude. After only a couple of months, he died in the night. None of the staff wanted to deal with the dead body, so Dad had to take care of it in the pre-dawn darkness. He woke me up so I could help him open doors and navigate his way to the morgue. I don’t remember any of that event. I remember only a pervading sense of shocked disappointment as if the sun had fallen suddenly and permanently out of the sky. When finished, we walked the few hundred feet back to our house for breakfast. We held hands around the table and dad prayed, but couldn’t finish. I opened my eyes. He was crying—a quiet, heaving grief I have seen only a handful of times in my entire life. Mom picked up where he had left off, finishing the prayer with thanksgiving for life, for Losokoi, for God’s abundant goodness. Delight's expression always takes the form of gratitude. When we delight, we give thanks. Ben Palpant Long after that morning, I wondered at his tears. For many years I assumed he wept for Losokoi, but now that I’m a father, I think he wept for me. He wept for my loss and for the horrible nature of death itself—an unwelcome reminder of our broken state—that had suddenly loomed over my childhood. I’m sure that deep down, my father also grieved the arrival of the fork in the road that death inevitably brings and he wondered if I would choose my life’s path wisely. Two roads diverge at the point of pain. One toward gratitude and joy. The other, toward self-pity and bitterness. The first is the road less travelled. The second is an eight lane freeway that cuts through every generation, every nation, every tribe, every political party, and every family. It is the primary thoroughfare of the human heart and those who travel it feel justified by its heavy traffic. Francis Schaeffer once said that “the beginning of man’s rebellion against God was, and is, the lack of a thankful heart.” His conviction resonates with Scripture. The Bible focuses so heavily on thankfulness that one gets a sneaky suspicion that we’re hardwired to self-destruct if we stop giving thanks. God’s people battle by giving thanks (2 Chronicles 20:21-24). God’s people give thanks at all times and in all seasons (Psalm 92:1-4). God’s people approach his throne with thankful hearts, replacing anxiety with gratitude (Phil. 4:6-7). God’s people give thanks for all things and in every circumstance (Eph. 5:19-20, 2 Thess. 5:18). It’s easy to read this biblical theme in light of our parents who reminded us to “say thank you.” And we often did so, albeit begrudgingly. But getting us to say thank you is not, I think, the ultimate goal of these passages. Saying thank you is the lowest standard, the bare minimum. The real goal is delight . Delight’s expression always takes the form of gratitude. When we delight, we give thanks. When we don’t delight, we have to work hard to act thankful. And everyone knows that acting thankful and being thankful are not the same thing. Of course, if I don’t feel thankful, it’s better to act thankful than to act the way I feel. But I’d like to reach the point in life when I’m so thankful that I don’t have to act anymore. Let’s get back to Losokoi. He didn’t have to act thankful because he was thankful. And just in case you didn’t notice, Losokoi’s gratitude was not circumstantial—proof that sadness and delight can coexist. His anguish was real. His delight and gratitude were real too. My little acts of kindness gave him great delight. Even the hospital staff’s efforts gave him cause for gratitude. That kind of selfless thankfulness is increasingly rare, largely, I think, because our affluence has made us discontented and we’re busy fighting for our own way, our own stuff, our own rights. As long as we’re fighting for ourselves, we can’t delight in others. One test of our gratitude is the degree to which we’re making for others. Delight begets creativity. Do you remember the first time you encountered a quail? What an enigmatic revelation! I bet you ran to find some paper and crayons so you could capture delight. This is just a theory, mind you, a hunch. My theory is that humanity’s best art is born out of some form of gratitude. True, ungrateful people can make art. Selfish people can too (Aren’t we all a little fearful, a little selfish?), but the work we create out of selfishness usually lacks the radiance, the transcendence, the universal appeal of anything created out of delight. The lessons Losokoi’s short life gives us extend to communities. Like him, communities can take the road less traveled toward gratitude and away from self-pity. He was, by all definitions, impoverished, hurting, even sick, but he was also incredibly healthy in every way that mattered. The same can be true of your community. Impoverished, hurting communities can still radiate joy, but rarely by accident. Joy in suffering is usually the byproduct of habitual gratitude. Thankful communities point outward. They limit narcissism and selfishness and self-protection by the very nature of their emotional momentum. Our hearts, like any other vehicle, have difficulty changing momentum once they get rolling. We best be sure that our momentum is carrying us toward gratitude, otherwise we’ll find ourselves stuck in a traffic jam on the eight lane freeway. The Gospels give us several compelling stories of thankfulness, but one in particular can point the way as we learn to live like Losokoi. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to the town of Bethany where he had previously raised Lazarus from the dead. A dinner was prepared for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” Sounds philanthropic enough, but I don’t think they really cared about the poor. What they cared about was the embarrassing extravagance of the gesture. Why couldn’t her gratitude be mild and respectable like theirs? So they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” Isn’t this the incarnation of Psalm 50:23? “The one who offers thanksgiving as sacrifice glorifies me.” Let Mary of Bethany and Losokoi show us how to give thanks. They know the story they’re in. It has moved them to tears of gratitude. The generosity of God has transformed their hearts and propelled them passed scrutiny into an emotional engagement with Jesus that consumes all of their person: body, mind, and spirit. Mary’s response to this welling gratefulness was to beautify the Beautiful One, to anoint the Anointed One. It was lavish generosity responding to lavish generosity. This is the spring from which all creativity and all Christian work flow. This is the spring around which every flourishing Christian community builds. This, my friends, is where we begin the important work of lighting the dark.

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with songwriting duo JJ & Dave Heller. JJ Heller writes lullabies with her husband Dave and sings them for children, their parents, and the children inside the parents. Since 2017, the Hellers have released a new song on Spotify the first Friday of every month. One of those songs, “Hand to Hold,” grew into a  picture book  by the same title, released a couple of weeks ago. In this episode, JJ and Dave talk with Jonathan Rogers about bedtime liturgies and the work of giving language to parents’ deepest hopes for their children. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 31 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by Carolyn Leiloglou When my kids were little, they loved when I read to them—they still do—and they especially loved when I sang to them, even though my voice is nothing special. But putting those two activities together, a book you could sing, that was a favorite that they would beg for again and again. Hand to Hold  by JJ Heller is one of those special books you can sing (but only if you want to). Heller is a singer-songwriter who has become known for her beautiful lullaby albums, which are enjoyed by parents as much as their kids. Her new book,  Hand to Hold,  is a picture book version of her song by the same title. But you don’t have to know the melody or sing it to enjoy this book with your child. The rhyming text flows beautifully when read aloud. This is the kind of book I can imagine becoming part of a bedtime ritual, bringing comfort and love at the end of the day. So much of this book is about the wonder of childhood: in nature, in the seasons, in exploring the world around them. Each page features a mother and daughter just doing ordinary things like baking cookies, skipping stones, or building a snowman. But it’s clear from the illustrations that the little girl is full of wonder and joy. Wonder is so natural for children, but it’s something we often lose touch with as adults. As parents, sometimes we can renew our wonder through the eyes of our children. One of my favorite page spreads shows the little girl staring up at fireflies while her mother watches her. Those of us with kids know that feeling of experiencing wonder or joy while watching our children. Hand to Hold invites us into that experience of vicarious wonder with these lines: You help me find the magic in ordinary days. Each minute is a marvel. No moment is the same. You notice every sunset, reminding me what’s true. You’re full of awe and wonder, and I’m in awe of you. — Hand to Hold , JJ Heller This prayer that her child would never lose the wonder in her soul surely applies to the parent reader as well. May we keep or regain the wonder in our souls, perhaps reawakened to it through the eyes of our children, so that we can approach with the heart of a child our Heavenly Father, whose hand is always there for us to hold. Click here to view Hand to Hold in the Rabbit Room Bookstore. Carolyn Leiloglou is the author of Library’s Most Wanted and the Noah Green Junior Zookeeper series. Her poems and stories have been published in Highlights, Clubhouse Jr., Cricket, and more. You can find her on her blog, housefullofbookworms.com , where she reviews her favorite children’s books each month.

by Mark Meynell No instrument exactly mimics the human voice, of course, but the clarinet comes close. A remarkably versatile instrument, it’s capable of producing rich, mellow tones as a result of its precisely turned wooden barrel. But within a hare’s breath, its sound can be transfigured into one of such piercing intensity that a single instrument can effortlessly cut through an entire orchestra, rising high above surrounding instruments in both tone and volume. This is because of the use of a single reed (a strip of vibrating cane attached to the mouthpiece—unlike the two reeds bound together on the oboe, the clarinet’s is fixed against the wood). The performer blows wind over the reed to make the sound, but it demands strong lungs managed by supreme breath control. That is simply to prevent it making ugly squeaks and screeches! To make it truly ‘sing’? Well, that requires incredible skill and experience. Whenever that gets pulled off, however, in performing one of the greats of the clarinet repertoire, I know of few other musical experiences as intense or overwhelming. This week’s playlist therefore unashamedly gathers several personal favourites in one place! These are often the initial go-tos if I’m in a pit and need to be lifted above the clouds. Rhapsody in Blue (1924) George Gershwin (1898–1937, American) Benjamin Grosvenor (piano) , Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, James Judd (cond.) How could we start anywhere else? The most famous clarinet solo in twentieth-century music. From low down in the instrument’s register, it’s meant to slide as smoothly and effortlessly as possible to the top. On a string instrument that would be easy. You just have to slide a finger along the string, without having to worry too much about picking out the individual notes. The string player’s challenge is first and foremost one of intonation—in other words, having such a grasp of tuning and the relative spaces between the notes along the string that you land in the right place every single time. Woodwind players have the opposite problem. Each tone is picked out in advance with individual key combinations along the barrel. So the task here is to create an aural illusion, so that it sounds as close to a slide as possible. Gershwin embodied the embrace of jazz by classically-trained musicians and his entire output is tinged with the complex rhythms and harmonies learned from the extraordinary phenomenon that is African American music. The clarinet itself embodies that cross-over as well. It sits as appropriately and seamlessly in a Viennese salon as it does in a New York speakeasy (as this playlist will show). Rhapsody in Blue has defined the emblematic sound of Roaring ‘20s New York, originally written for piano and jazz band and then subsequently rescored for full orchestra. Ideas for the piece first came to Gershwin on a train and once the rhapsody gets under way, we can feel the insistent rhythm of wheels on rails. But it is much more than simply that. It is as if the clarinet introduction sweeps us all up into the joyous ride of a lifetime. Allegretto, 1st Mov't, Clarinet Sonata in E flat major (Op. 167, 1921) Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921, French) Gervase de Peyer (clarinet) , Gwynneth Pryor (piano) Gershwin had been to Paris to study composition with the legendary Nadia Boulanger but she turned him down, not because he was beyond hope but because he was beyond needing it. She didn’t want him to lose his unique style. But Paris has had untold influence on music for centuries, and Saint-Saëns was very much its epicentre a generation before. The clarinet sonata was one of his last works, often grouped with his oboe and bassoon sonatas written at a similar time. From its opening seconds, we’re drawn into a lyrical, daydream-like meander, as if we’ve suddenly remembered some happy memories and we spend a few moments reliving them. Even though this was composed just three years before Gershwin’s masterpiece, this is a world apart, perhaps a last gasp of nineteenth century nostalgia, untouched by the horrors of the First World War. It is in no sense diminished because of that, for Saint-Saëns was a man in his late eighties by this point. But the sonata’s seemingly effortless grace and beauty proves him to have been at the height of his powers even then. Blue Horizon (1944) Sidney Bechet (1897-1959, American) Sidney Bechet and His Blue Note Jazzmen Sidney Bechet was one of the finest jazz clarinettists of all time and this track provides a kind of aural bridge between the first two items in the playlist. Bechet’s sound is evidence of his mastery of technique, with a gorgeously smooth tone and purity, evocative of his native New Orleans. But its gentle groove and big band feel show that we have travelled a long way from the refined salons of Paris. Nevertheless, he found that France was more accommodating and conducive for an African American musician from the South and so after the Second World War, he settled in Paris, remaining there until his death. This was despite an unfortunate incident during a sojourn in the 1920s in which he was imprisoned for the best part of a year and then deported for accidentally shooting a woman. But that’s a whole other story! Fughetta, V of Five Bagatelles (Op. 23, 1930s) Gerald Finzi (1901-1956, English) Emma Johnson (clarinet) , Malcolm Martineau (piano) Finzi wrote relatively little chamber music and Five Bagatelles is the closest he came to a sonata for any instrument, but he would go on to compose a much-loved Clarinet Concerto after the Second World War. That was of course written on a far grander scale for full orchestra, whereas this suite is is intimate, ideal for the close-up and personal ambience of a house concert. A bagatelle is an eighteenth century pub-game, in which players compete to get up to nine small balls into holes on a board, and which was later developed into a pin-ball machine. So the word came to mean something fun but insubstantial, a trifle and diversion. Finzi’s pieces convey precisely that, but there is much more to them than that. Apart from the technical demands of playing them, they express a glorious lightness and joie-de-vivre . So, I find that their positive effect on my mood is anything but trifling. Galántai Táncok (‘Dances of Galánta’ , 1933) Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967, Hungarian) Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer (cond.) So this marks a major gear-change. Kodály (pronounced Kō-dye ) was a brilliant musician and educator who transformed the way children are taught music the world over. Galánta is now part of Slovakia, but for nearly ten centuries it was a key region of the Kingdom of Hungary and was where Kodály spent much of his childhood. This piece for full orchestra was composed for a commission from the Budapest Philharmonic Society and makes use of folk tunes and gypsy music from the region. As such it is not specifically a piece for clarinet, but it is an important soloist early on, setting the mood and harking back to the gypsy and klezmer bands her remembered from his youth. This illustrates well the clarinet’s ability to pierce through a wall of sound and make itself stand out. Glorious. Clarinet Quintet in B minor (Op. 115, 1891) Johannes Brahms (1833-1897, German) Andreas Ottensamer (clarinet) , Leonidas Kavakos (violin) , Christoph Koncz (violin) , Antoine Tamestit (viola) & Stephan Koncz (cello) Last but by no means least is one of the all-time greats in any musical form. Brahms’ clarinet quintet is a piece I have returned to again and again and again and it never fails to grab one with its searing beauty and pathos. Brahms had decided to retire formally from composition in 1890 (at 57), feeling he had said everything he could say. However, it was after hearing the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld that he was inspired to take up his pen again and he would write several compositions for clarinet as a result. Few composers had written clarinet quintets (in other words clarinet added to the standard string quartet) but Mozart’s is the most famous and beloved. It was a toss-up as to whose to include here because Mozart’s is stunning and one of his masterpieces of masterpieces. But in the end, I couldn’t bear to part with Brahms’! Since it is inspired and indeed based on Mozart’s, one could even say we therefore get two for the price of one. But that’s unfair. So go and dig that one out at some point. There are four movements: Allegro in B minor (fast) Adagio in B (slow) Andantino in D (a little more than walking pace) Con moto in B minor (with pace) There is life and vigour to the piece, but it is hard to avoid the sense of a man writing in his later years and reflecting on the many twists and turns of his life. In just over half and hour of music, the quintet shows off the extraordinary range of the instrument, and provides as great a tribute to the wonders of the clarinet as it’s possible to hear.

by Pete Peterson Walter Wangerin, Jr., died yesterday. He’d wrestled lung cancer for a decade, so it was a long time coming, but death stings no less for the wait. He was our first Hutchmoot speaker and a National Book Award winner. He wrote some of my very favorite stories in The Book of the Dun Cow , The Book of Sorrows , and Ragman, and Other Cries of Faith . I developed a relationship with him over the years as his editor and learned so much from him, and his words, and the unique ways he used them that I find myself often thinking as I write, “What would Walt say?” And one of the great delights of my life has been the publishing of so many of his books and stories under the banner of Rabbit Room Press. For me, he was a giant. He threw a long shadow. The proof of that shadow’s reach, perhaps, is that a few weeks ago when I sat down to write a short story for a forthcoming book called The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad , the tale that came out was, unexpectedly, about Walt. I wrote it quite by accident in a single sitting, having intended to write a different tale altogether. What came out instead was an homage to the literary giant in whose shadow I counted myself fortunate to dwell. So today, in the wake of his long-expected passage into mystery, it seems right that I honor him as he honored all of us: with a story. SIR GALAHAD and the PLUMED KNIGHT from The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad (forthcoming from Rabbit Room Press) Copyright 2021 by A. S. Peterson Night upon night upon night had Sir Galahad traveled, until at last in the deeps of the Forest Wyld he found himself lost beyond hope. The thick of the wood gathered around him and permitted no light of the sun to enter. He slid in despair from his horse, pulled his helm from his head, and looked all about him for some clue of his deliverance, yet no clue presented itself and in the darkness he fumbled at his firecraft like one desperate for air. “I fear we have come to the end,” he said, but his faithful steed had already wandered away in search of a digestible fodder. “So be it, then. I am alone.” “Marrrooooned!” Galahad startled and dropped his tinderbox as he looked up. Before him stood a ragged knight. The man’s breath came out in scrapes and coughs and his appearance was like a withered oak that, though once mighty and staunch, had been winnowed down to the pith by some blight. The man’s brittle bones rattled about in his armor and he wobbled upon his feet, but his voice was halcyon and pure. Upon his shield was blazoned a fiery rooster, and upon his helm a great plume of cock-feathers was fixed, though they had long since lost their first lustre. “Forgive me,” said Galahad, “but I did not think to find another knight in this dismal place.” “It is long years indeed since anyone thought to find me at all.” “Perhaps. Yet here we are all the same. I am Galahad, son of Sir Lancelot, knight of Arthur’s round table in Camelot. But tell me your name, and sit. I shall have a fire to warm us quick enough.” The wizened knight shuffled forward and bowed. “Sir Walter am I, son of someone long forgotten, knight of a kingdom old when the foundations of Tintagel were but a dream.” “Where is this kingdom you hail from?” “Where? I have lost it, I fear, and am unlikely to find my way back till the newness of all things is at hand.” Sir Galahad studied the ancient knight with some concern, for he seemed to have strayed out of an elder age indeed. “You speak in riddles, Sir Walter. But even a riddler is fine company in this wild place. Will you sit and tell me how you came here?” As Galahad turned to ply his firecraft once more, Sir Walter sat. As he did so a great creak sprang forth and a grinding of metal accompanied his movement, and Galahad could not discern whether the noise issued from the rusted armor or from the bones within it. “Come. Speak. I beg you.” “Marooned.” “How mean you?” “Maroooooned!” The old knight wailed the word like a lament, and Galahad looked about fearing the noise might draw some wild beast from the darkness. “How came you to this marooning then?” “They have left me, and all that remains of them are the tales I keep.” “Who left you?” “The Keepers.” “Keepers? Keepers of what?” “Of the Earth. All gone away. Even her.” Now beginning to suspect the man of madness, Galahad endeavored to be gentle with him. “I am sorry to hear of it. Can I assist you in some way? Can I help you back to these Keepers?” “I cannot go back. I can only follow, and testify to what I’ve seen.” “Have you seen some holy vision, then?” It seemed an ancient grief came upon the withered knight. He shuddered in his iron cage and wept beside the fire. Sir Galahad, unsure how to comfort the distress of the wayward knight, retrieved a ration of victuals from his bag and set about the preparation of a simple meal—some water in a pan, some dried beef to make a broth, a few carvings of potato for substance, and a sprig of rosemary for grace. As he stirred the thickening stew, a noise from the outer darkness disturbed his preparations. It was like a faint howl, yet distant as if it came from the bowels of the earth itself. Sir Galahad cocked his head to listen and noted that Sir Walter stifled his grief and did the same. “Hear you a howling?” Sir Galahad asked. “A howling, aye. Ever it haunts me, and ever I follow its forlorn note.” “What manner of thing is it?” “A beast. A friend. A castaway. A regretful word. A specter of my ruin.” “Again your riddles confound me, sir. Can you not speak plainly?” “What can be plainly said of ruin or war? Only fools speak of them plainly. I have been given years uncountable and undeserved, and I have learned better than to speak simply of any mystery or terror. For it’s in mystery the howling resounds and tumbles round in the belly of the good earth, striving with powers vast and unreckonable by mortal men.” “Then if nothing plain may be said of it, adorn it with a tale and spin it in the light of our fire.” Sir Walter’s eyes fixed then upon some distant point and he became silent. Even his creaking ceased. “The spinning of tales is my quest. You have spoken aright. But alas, I have not the strength tonight. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow.” Sir Galahad frowned and offered to the old man a bowl of his meager stew. But the knight refused it and slumped in his armor, drifting, it seemed, toward sleep. “Are you ill, Sir Walter?” inquired Galahad. “Ill? Aye. Ill with a wound that cannot heal. Every breath a trial. Every word a trouble. Yet of breath are words given flight. And by words are stories flown. So suffer I must, for it’s a story my chest is shaped to toll. Strike me, and I shall ring it out.” “To strike you so would be too hard a tale to tell. But perhaps some rest will help instead. Take your sleep, sir. No harm will come to you here.” Sir Galahad finished the meal as Sir Walter’s breath rasped in and out of his brittle chest. He pondered the strange man as the fire waned, feeling a kinship which moved him to affection like that of a young man adoring a grandfather. At length, the fire grew cool and Galahad rose in the darkness to patrol the area before retiring to sleep. With the fire’s faint embers as his anchor, he ventured amongst the trees, sword drawn, ears alert for danger. And soon again, as if from a far-off cavern, a howling note arose and drifted amongst the columns of the great arboreal cathedral about him. Galahad turned this way and that to discern the direction of its origin, but it eluded him. The sound came from everywhere at once, and yet was ever distant. As he stood alert to the howl and the darkness that carried it, he heard behind him a heavy crunch . He spun, sword outhrown and ready, and in the shadows he spied a great form moving slowly. The darkness did not permit a full report of its features, but as Galahad drew nearer with blade upraised, he made out four stout legs, thick shoulders, and a broad head adorned with a curved horn. Its like, he thought, he had never seen. “Stay thee in thy place, beast,” spake Galahad. At these words the dolorous creature turned to Galahad and set the weight of her eyes upon him. Such eyes Galahad had never known—eyes like wells deeper than any pit or cave, eyes whose depths reach beyond the foundations of the world and encompass all things–all sufferings, all joys, all power, all grace. Under the gaze of those eyes Galahad felt both great terror and great peace, and in his inability to contend with the mind that governed them, he stood transfixed, still as a chiseled statue before its sculptor. Helplessly, and yet somehow joyfully, he watched as the dun-colored cow approached him nearer and nearer until the mysterious beast stood at the tip of his sword, no more afraid than if she had approached a blade of grass. Galahad felt suddenly that he ought to drop his sword, for the powerful feeling came across him that this was a creature against which he should risk no offense. Indeed he thought perhaps he should turn his sword and present its hilt to the cow as an offering. But still his enchantment held and he could not move, and the great cow, larger now than she had at first seemed, gently dipped her head and with her horn touched Galahad’s outstretched sword. As the two points met, a golden note rang out in the darkness like that of a perfect voice, and along the blade of his sword a blessing ran like quicksilver. Then the cow attended him no longer. She ambled past Galahad, and he saw that the sibling of the horn that had blessed his blade was sundered at the root and missing, broken away, perhaps, in some long-forgotten clash. The great cow moved with power and grace and settled herself to the ground in a crescent shape surrounding Sir Walter. Again, Galahad felt stirred to action, to defense, in case the beast’s remaining horn should be turned to violence against the elder knight. Yet even as he thought it, the need for the thought fled away, for the cow gently nudged the old man with her nose as she might one of her own young, nuzzling him with infinite tenderness until he rested upon her flank. Galahad looked on in amazement. He felt he was witness to some holy sacrament and was an intruder amongst its graces. The cow, sensing his uncertainty, turned her head toward him, and Galahad found himself captive once more in the gaze of one whose eyes said with a single look that they knew every stitch and atom and act of his whole life and being. And under the weight of that timeless scrutiny he slowly laid himself down, for sleep was coming upon him like the rising tide, lap upon lap upon lap. As his eyes closed into slumber, he watched the cow gently licking the withered Sir Walter, licking his armor new, licking his skin white, licking his feathers clean, licking gently, softly, selflessly. Lap upon lap upon lap. When morning came, a cock crowed and started Galahad awake. He leapt to his feet, for he recalled the late events of the evening and feared some sleeping spell had come upon him. Indeed, as he looked around he saw no sign of Sir Walter or the benevolent form of the otherworldly cow. But lo, from out of the trees a tall lady strode, clothed in white with a splash of brilliant ruby about her golden neck. “Hark!” cried Sir Galahad. “This wood is wild and not safe for such as thee, my lady. Already a companion has vanished in the night. Come within my camp that I may guard thee.” The lady gave Galahad a knowing smile and condescended to his request. Upon her back she bore a ponderous sword, and this she removed as she sat and placed it athwart her knees. The skin of her face was ruddy and ageless and the lines about her eyes were lovely to read, though their tales were perilous. “I am Galahad, of the table round. Arthur-king is my lord and liege. Pray tell, how I may serve thee.” “The Lady Pertelote am I, of the Keepers of the Earth. Our days are nearly passed and I am much bereaved. But I have no need of your service or your sword. I have come with a tale, a farewell, and a blessing.” “And a mighty sword, I see. But in what knight’s service do you bear it?” “Little knight,” she said with a tolerant smile, “the ken of creaturekind rolls wider than you yet have eyes to see. I have borne grief and violence and children, and for this the sword is mine by right. War-Spur is her name. Her steel is descended of the first mountains of the earth. The bite of basilisks have tested her. The blood of Cocktrice has tempered her. And upon her fell stroke I shall break the world.” “A mighty sword indeed. I have misjudged you. Surely you are a high queen of old.” “A queen? Once, perhaps. Certainly I have loved a King. But tell me of your lost companion.” “A knight he was, though somewhat addled. And if I recall aright, he spoke of the Keepers of the Earth and mourned their loss. ‘Marooned!’ he cried, for he seemed all alone. Is he known to you?” The Lady Pertelote smiled, and though her jaw was hard and mighty as the ridgeline of a mountain, her smile was as the sun’s first rays at dawn. “Aye. He is known.” “Then will you join me in the search? For he was ill and near to death, I fear, and now he’s wandered away.” At this the lady laughed, and the sound was bright. The trees trembled in the passage of her mirth and the shadows slackened their hold on the wood. “Forgive me, lady. I meant no jest.” “Then tell me, was there any other visitor to your fire last night?” Sir Galahad faltered, for he half-believed the appearance of the strange cow to have been a phantom of his mind, a figment of his own weariness. But the Lady Pertelote’s inquiry was not easily turned aside, and he confessed, “I saw, or thought I saw, a dun-colored cow, single-horned.” The Lady nodded and smiled gently. She breathed a deep sigh as of one released from trouble. “Then the time is come at last.” “What time is that, pray tell?” But the Lady ignored his inquisition and continued, “Did Sir Walter give you his tale?” Sir Galahad was somewhat startled to hear the name spoken when he had not given it, but he could no longer deny that he was himself caught up in some grander tale of which he was but an audience. “Nay, dear Lady, for he was weary, and grievously wounded I think. He said he would grant me a tale this morn, but now he is gone, and I fear I am poorer for it.” She frowned then, and the shadow of the wood crept nearer. “It is true that you are poorer without his tale. He has spun them across the world for years uncountable, and they have held the world together with their golden threads. I promised you a tale, a farewell, and a blessing. Therefore accept the first of these. I give you a part of what he could not: “In another age, he contended with the Wyrm of the World’s Ending. He vied with Wyrm’s twisted offspring and with all the evil brood that offspring sired. He shepherded us. He storied us. He sang to us to keep us. He kept the Keepers and we kept the Earth. “But in the wake of his contention with his foes, he cursed a little one he ought to have held dear, a lowly dog who had only given him his faith. Think you then how his heart was torn when Great Wyrm arose—and instead of the proud knight, it was the lowly, accursed dog that rushed to save us all and was lost to us in the saving.” She paused and shed a silver tear in memory of a grief that Galahad scarce could ken. “Yet though the world was saved, though the Keepers had kept it, the feathered knight was marooned and alone, for he could not forgive himself.” She dropped her eyes and quieted, and Galahad felt the pull of many questions. “A strange tale. I have not encountered its like.” “And you will not hear its like again. That is why I have come to this appointed place at this appointed time. She bade me here, and I have answered.” Though Galahad understood little of the Lady’s tale, in his heart he understood the “she” of whom the Lady spoke and longed to be seen by those eyes once more. “Sir Walter will soon pass beyond his tales. Or rather, he will pass into the fulfilment of them. And who then knows what tales will follow? But look! Bear witness. A new chapter shall you write. And then you shall bear it from this darkening wood so that he and I and all our creaturekind will not pass from the world altogether.” Thereupon, the Lady Pertelote arose and took up her sword. In all the wood now arose the howling as before, though it nearer came and louder grew. Then out of the wood strode Sir Walter, slight as ever, but clean and radiant in his aspect, his feathers bright, though his breath still rasped and his bones still clattered. “Marooooonnned!” he cried. Lady Pertelote laid a tender look upon him and answered softy, “No longer.” Then she heaved War-Spur aloft. A glimmering light ran down its length and skyward sprang. The darkened trees crowded away from its argent gleam, and the sun shone upon the light-starved ground. Then the great lady thrust the sword into the earth. Hilt-deep she drove it with a single stroke. And behold: the Earth was broken asunder. A vast crack opened before her, dividing the Forest Wyld upon opposite sides of a chasm. Galahad trembled with fear and knelt upon the quaking earth and watched helplessly as Sir Walter tottered toward the pit. The Lady turned to face Sir Walter. Galahad crept to the edge of the chasm and looked over its precipice. There, down, down, down, in the depths of the earth lay exposed a great skeleton, as of a wyrm whose full measure lay beyond imagination. Coiled around the bowels of Earth it was and dessicated beyond all life or hope of life, and within the socket of its cavernous eye, Galahad spied a peculiar thing: a lowly dog—a shaggy, emaciated, flea-bitten thing with a ragged nose and a mangy hide. It howled, and its howl was familiar. But once only did it send up that saddened note, for then it saw Sir Walter at the brink. The dog sprang away from the monstrous corpse and bounded upon the sides of the chasm, working back and forth across heaps of stone, ascending, ascending, then cresting the cusp and leaping at last to lick the face of Sir Walter. “Is it you?” said the plumed knight. The lowly dog licked the knight again and again and again, lap upon lap upon lap. Lady Pertelote withdrew her sword, and the rent earth slammed back into its place, sealing away the dread skeleton beneath the hills. Sir Galahad approached the Lady and the Knight and the Dog. “What thing was that I saw below?” Spake the Lady Pertelote: “The Wyrm of the World’s Ending, crushed forever by the lowliest of creaturekind.” Then the Dog it seemed was transfigured from the form of a lowly cur to the princeliest of hounds—golden of hide, sharp of tooth, kind of eye, and thick of shoulder. Like a horse he was in his stature, might, and power, and his kindness he continually offered to the withered knight with lap upon lap upon lap. For the knight’s part, he wept—but not as before, for one’s tears may be transfigured too. The Lady turned to Galahad and bowed. “Sir Walter’s quest is now complete, and the Keepers’ age has passed.” Then the great hound came forth. He approached Sir Galahad and at his feet laid a broken horn, the sibling of which Galahad had seen upon the head of the benevolent cow the night before. “A great gift,” said the Lady. “The very horn that pierced the eye of Wyrm the Terrible, Corrupter of the Earth. She once broke herself to give it. Now he has given it to you. Take it up. Carry it with you. It will serve you faithfully.” “And what of Sir Walter?” But when Galahad turned, Sir Walter and the Hound were far afield, side by side, dwindling into the sunrise, for behold: though land was healed, the Forest Wyld was riven in twain, its darkness broken forever by the Lady’s sword. “The tales are yours now. Tell them well. The Earth will need them before the end. May they bind the world together in their golden threads. You will not see us again until the newness of all things is at hand. Fare thee well, Sir Galahad. Godspeed.” Sir Galahad watched until the feathered Knight, and the Dog, and the great Lady had ventured wholly into the brightness of the risen sun. Then he turned, and he went his way in wonder. Pete Peterson is the author of the Revolutionary War adventure The Fiddler’s Gun and its sequel Fiddler’s Green. Among the many strange things he’s been in life are the following: U.S Marine air traffic controller, television editor, art teacher and boatwright at the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch, and progenitor of the mysterious Budge-Nuzzard. He lives in Nashville with his wife, Jennifer, where he's the Executive Director of the Rabbit Room and Managing Editor of Rabbit Room Press.

by the Rabbit Room From the personal depth of Inkmoot to the collaborative magic of Pass the Piece, last year’s Hutchmoot: Homebound would not have been the same without the loving contributions of so many brilliant visual artists speaking and presenting in the art studio. So we’re excited to share with you the full list of art studio speakers and presenters who will be adding to the magic of Hutchmoot: Homebound this year. Drumroll, please! As many names as you see here, there are yet more guests who will be joining us—be on the lookout for another announcement including guests who will be providing content for kids throughout the weekend and more. Rabbit Room Members, Guess What! We’ll have some fun, special Hutchmoot content for members again this year! As for what it is? You’ll just have to wait—or become a member—to find out. If you want to learn more about what membership means you can read about it on the blog or on our Become a Member page .

by Carolyn Leiloglou Mitali Perkins is the author of many wonderful books for children ranging from picture books to young adult novels. But I first heard of her not through her books but through  this article  she wrote for Christianity Today in which she claims the classic books she read as a child paved the way for her to later accept Jesus. When I learned she’d be discussing these classic children’s novels in more depth in her new book,  Steeped in Stories: Timeless Classics to Refresh Our Weary Souls , I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. Now for a quick detour through ancient Greece. Aristotle believed that every virtue was the mean, or mid-point, between two vices. Courage is the mean between fear and rashness. Generosity is the virtue between stinginess and wasteful extravagance. I imagine this as a swinging pendulum with truth in the center and error—which can often have a flavor of truth—on the extremes of either side. Too often, instead of seeking the truth that lies in the narrow middle, we swing wide in reaction against something. Dominant culture swings one way, so Christians react and swing the other, oblivious to the fact that the truth often gets passed by in the middle. We live in a culture that’s quick to cancel anything it doesn’t agree with. Out with the old, in with the new, whether it’s fashion, technology, or morals. Of course, this causes an equally strong reaction in those who see the olden days through rose-colored glassed and would rather boycott the new. We see this same cultural tug-of-war going on today about books, specifically older classics, many of which contain inherent racism or other “isms.” One side calls for us to cancel all such books. The other digs in their heels, saying they aren’t offended so you shouldn’t be either. But what if there is a middle road? One where we can read with open eyes that see injustice and open hearts to learn wisdom from the past? That’s exactly the path advocated by Mitali Perkins in her new book  Steeped in Stories . We’re often blinded by our cultural context, but Perkins has a unique perspective, seeing the world through a mix of pre-modern (through her traditional Bengali upbringing as an immigrant and the child of immigrants), modern (through the classic books she read as a young person that shaped her soul), and post-modern lenses (as a member of our present culture). She advocates that no one cultural viewpoint has a corner on the truth, but that seeing through multiple lenses can help us find both the flaws and the virtues in the present and the past. Perkins takes seven classic novels as guides:  Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Emily of Deep Valley, The Hobbit, Little Women, A Little Princess,  and  The Silver Chair . She walks us through the dominate vice and virtue examined by each story. She also delves into how each book treats the outsider. She shows us familiar novels with fresh eyes through a lens that is critical, yet full of love and respect for these mentor authors. Perkins shows us familiar novels with fresh eyes through a lens that is critical, yet full of love and respect for these mentor authors. Carolyn Leiloglou The end of each chapter includes discussion questions which could be addressed alone or as part of a book group. In fact, Perkins will be hosting an  online book group  to celebrate the launch of her book starting in September 2021. Although  Steeped in Stories  is aimed at encouraging adults to thoughtfully read the classics, Perkins does touch on how she handled the sensitive topics in each book when reading them to her adopted twin sons when they were young. I was amazed at the number and variety of quotes Perkins included in this well-researched book. She quotes theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and more. I found myself underlining something on nearly every page. I’m thankful that Perkins calls us back to the truth in the middle, Aristotle-style, neither throwing out the old books nor turning a blind eye to their faults. May we all grow in discernment and love as we read both the old and the new. I hope you’ll also give some of Perkins’s novels a try. I especially loved  Forward Me Back to You  (which I reviewed  here ) and  You Bring the Distant Near . Carolyn Leiloglou is the author of Library’s Most Wanted and the Noah Green Junior Zookeeper series. Her poems and stories have been published in Highlights, Clubhouse Jr., Cricket, and more. You can find her on her blog, housefullofbookworms.com , where she reviews her favorite children’s books each mont h.

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with scholar, author, and professor Diana P. Glyer. Professor Diana Pavlac Glyer is an expert on Tolkien and Lewis, especially with regard to their collaboration in the Inklings group. She is also the editor of A Compass for Deep Heaven —a collection of essays about Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy. This book is the fruit of Professor Glyer’s practicing what she preaches in generous collaboration with emerging scholars. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 32 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by Jonny Jimison Jonny Jimison is back with the thirty-second edition of his beloved comic, Rabbit Trails. Click here to visit Jonny Jimison’s website.

by Mark Meynell Infinite space offers infinite inspiration. That’s because, in the immortal words of the late, great Douglas Adams, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” So, as with almost every other playlist in this series, the number of potential inclusions is vast. Inevitably, here lies arbitrariness and exclusion—but I will pursue both with abandon. I was the perfect age for Star Wars when it first came out: 7 in 1977. I even drew a degree of affinity with its universe from the simple fact that I shared a name with Luke Skywalker’s real name. Ever since, I’ve loved the thought of space adventures, though being a scientific and mathematical dunce meant that I could never relate to the jargon and gobbledegook. It was the sheer unbridled romance of it all, the lack of any apparent limitation to the powers of human imagination (apart from pesky things like thermodynamics laws, cosmic distances and the need for oxygen and water, of course). As a result, I’ve always kept an ear out for space music. Not to be confused with spaced music, naturally, although the way that some contemporary composers seem to set about writing for space, you could be forgiven for such a confusion. When the Voyager space probe was first sent into space, someone at NASA had the brainwave of sending a golden disc of recordings to represent the best of us . It contained tracks of indigenous music from around the world (Gamelan music from Indonesia, percussion from Senegal, panpipes from Peru, chanting from the Navajo, ragas from India, and some classics like Louis Armstrong’s “Melancholy Blues” and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Good”). But there was one composer who stood head and shoulders above the others, the only one with more than one track: J. S. Bach. He had three pieces. The combination was designed to impress alien life at human sophistication and civilisation. And frankly, I’m with them. When someone suggested having only Bach on the disc, renowned astronomer Carl Sagan dismissed the idea by saying, ‘That would just be showing off.’ So much for sending our music into space. But what of the music inspired by space? That’s the subject for this list. And to do this we must start with someone who wasn’t writing ‘space music’ per se at all. Symphony No. 14 in D : I Allegro Assai William Herschel (1738-1822, German-British) London Mozart Players, Matthias Bamert (cond.) Herschel was born Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel in Hanover, twenty years or so after the Elector of Hanover became George I of Great Britain. The two states were thus bound by deep political ties for well over a century and the cultural traffic between the two was almost constant. The great George Frederic Handel first visited London in 1710 and would move to take up official positions in 1717. Herschel would accompany his musician father to London four decades later at only 19. He quickly gained his own reputation as a good musician and held posts in various cities like Newcastle, Sunderland, and Bath. This symphony is rarely heard anymore but has a charm all of its own (on display in the first movement here). So much for the day job. Herschel, together with his musician younger sister Caroline, was, in addition, an amateur astronomer. I say amateur, but that’s only because he wasn’t employed as such. The siblings were pretty remarkable scientists as well as internationally renowned telescope makers. William discovered the planet that would come to be known Uranus (from the Greek god of that name, whose name is derived from ouranoi meaning ‘heavens’) although he called it the Georgian star (after the king). Naturally, the French were having none of that name, so for a time it was actually called Herschel —which is why Caroline would make several discoveries of her own, including several comets and nebulae, and in fact, would become the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and the first woman in England to hold a government position. Quite the family, then. So despite this symphony not having a specific tie-in, there can be little doubt that its composer was inspired by gazing into the night sky. Deep Field: 5. Earth Choir Eric Whitacre (1970- , American) Eric Whitacre Singers & Virtual Choir 5, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Eric Whitacre (cond.) We have met Eric Whitacre before in these lists ( #7, Inexpressible Grief Expressed ) and his choral music is a firm favourite. He goes in for lush melodies and rich, scrunchy harmonies which manage to stay on the right side of the sentimental (in case you’d not noticed so far, this is something I appreciate!). In astronomical terms a ‘deep field’ is a photograph of space taken with a long exposure in order to capture even the faintest of stars. These images have reached popular consciousness through the results beamed back from the Hubble Space Telescope and they are breath-taking even to the untrained eye. Whitacre was commissioned in 2018 to write music for a Hubble-inspired IMAX film to be shown at various sites including the Smithsonian and Griffith Observatory. The suite of tracks works brilliantly in its own right, although you can get a sense of the scale and wonder even when viewing the footage on a small screen. Whitacre studiously avoids the clichés of a thousand sci-fi soundtracks while communicating with musical vocabulary that is entirely fitting, using a vast range of tones, including the barely audible. Close your eyes and be transported into deep space. Polaris “Voyage for Orchestra” (2011) Thomas Adès (1971- , British) London Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Adès (cond.) Thomas Adès is one of the most stimulating and exciting of British composers alive. His work is not always accessible immediately (unlike Whitacre, say). But he grabs you by the scruff of your neck and demands your attention. Polaris was commissioned in 2018 for the brand new Frank Gehry-designed concert hall in Miami, the New World Center. Polaris is of course the North Star, the brightest in the northern hemisphere’s night sky, and thus key to getting one’s bearings around the various constellations. Think The Plough (or Big Dipper if you’re North American) and follow the trajectory of the far edge of the Plough’s ‘bucket’ and you’ll find it. Ades called this ‘a voyage’, a one-movement piece but it meanders through different stages and moods. It lasts 15 minutes, so this is not a voyage ‘to scale’! But as the developing music weaves around the orchestra, it is hard not to feel a sense of cosmic adventure. Time’s Arrow: I. The Void – II. Explosive Exposition (1990, excerpt) Anthony Payne (1936-2021, British) Sir Andrew Davis (conductor), BBC Symphony Orchestra Anthony Payne died earlier this year just days after his wife and after illness (though not COVID-19, as far as I can discover). He was a remarkable musician, but I had only encountered him because of his brilliant and utterly convincing reconstruction of Elgar’s 3rd Symphony. He just had an incomplete score together with some sketches and scraps for the rest to work on, since it was left unfinished on Elgar’s desk when he died in 1934. But Payne’s work is a triumph and I adore listening to it. It sounds utterly Elgarian. You won’t think that of this piece, though! This could only be late twentieth-century, influenced by the Russian masters like Stravinsky and Shostakovich as well as modernists on both sides of the Atlantic. It was commissioned for the BBC Proms in 1990 and was deemed a masterpiece very soon. In it, he seeks to depict the Big Bang, a cosmic event of inconceivable proportions! Payne’s audacity of intent is verging on the insane! I’ll leave you to decide how successful he has been. In the Shadow of the Moon (soundtrack) : Re-Entry Philip Sheppard (1969- , English) Philip Sheppard and studio orchestra I was gripped by the 2006 documentary by British scientists and filmmakers David Sington and Christopher Riley, In the Shadow of the Moon . Its premise is simple: tell the story of the men who walked on the moon. There were only twelve. Twenty-four reached the moon’s orbit during the Apollo programme, of whom ten appear in the film (seven actually having stepped on it). If you have not seen it, do so! Last time I checked, it had 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and 91% Audience score. But don’t overlook Philip Sheppard’s soundtrack. It’s stunning and, akin to the others listed in this post which have accompanying footage, it stands its own. He has subsequently gone on to compose for many films and other projects (including Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London. The whole disc does everything you want in a soundtrack in spades, but is evocative and moving even if you haven’t seen the film. That cannot be said for (dare I say it?!) the vast majority of movie soundtracks which seem trite and clichéd all too often. In fact, how about this as a fun game for all the family: take an unknown soundtrack at random and then try to retell the story cliché by cliché without watching it! Then compare notes with the actual production! But I don’t think you could do that with this one. After our cosmic voyage, what more appropriate close to the short pieces than Re-Entry . It has it all! The Planets (Op. 32, 1914-17) Gustav Holst (1874-1934, English) Sir Simon Rattle (conductor), Rundfunkchor Berlin, Berlin Philharmonic NB video is different as the recommended recording is not on youtube. So, this is a controversial one to include here. Holst’s Planets suite is not astronomy at all, strictly speaking. It is that serious endeavour’s offshoot, the absurdity that is astrology. The more you investigate its claims the more ridiculous it becomes, quite frankly. It is made up of a sequence of flimsy premises piled high on ridiculous faith-leaps and creative fancies. But perhaps I’m not getting my point across clearly enough. I think astrology is totally dumb. And it has precious little to do with astronomy. Nevertheless, Holst’s Planets is a masterpiece and, for all its popularity, it deserves close attention. Holst was born in Gloucestershire to British parents, his father descended from various European families. Most of his professional life was occupied with teaching music in several institutions, most notably St Paul’s Girl’s School, Hammersmith (from 1905 until his death). It was there that he pioneered music education for women in Britain. Despite this, he managed to sustain an impressive musical output. Holst had premiered a major work for orchestra in 1911 called Phantastes , inspired by the famous George MacDonald book of that title. It was not a success (and has never been recorded, as far as I can tell) so Holst formally withdrew it. He was looking for something else to get his teeth into to overcome the disappointment. The Planets was just that, preoccupying him throughout the First World War, and it would become the piece for which he is best known. The seven planets of the solar system are each depicted in seven movements, evoking their astrological (rather than physical or astronomical) character. I suppose we could say that they thus correspond in some loose way to the seven Narnia books as decoded by Michael Ward in his remarkable Planet Narnia (although Lewis took as his inspiration the mediaeval system which included Sol , the Sun, and Luna , Earth’s moon, instead of Herschel’s Uranus or the 1847-discovered Neptune). Mars, the Bringer of War Venus, the Bringer of Peace Mercury, the Winged Messenger Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age Uranus, the Magician Neptune, the Mystic These seven movements are so frequently played now and used to accompany a vast range of footage and moods that we easily miss how overflowing with invention and brilliance they are. There are fantastic melodies (Brits will know that of Jupiter as the tune for I vow to thee my country ) and epic rhythms (how many newsreels from the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland or Russia have been accompanied by Holst’s Mars? Too many to count). At every turn, Holst gives us something new, leaving a unique legacy that pops up throughout twentieth century cinematic music everywhere: there’s the mysterious chills provided by a wordless chorus of female voices in Neptune, or the affecting melancholy of Saturn, and the gorgeous romanticism of Venus’s peace ushered in by tender solos on violin and then oboe. This is truly music to return to again and again.

by Drew Miller It was Pizza Night on Friday, March 13th, 2020. The candles were lit, the music was playing, and I had just adorned two old fashioneds with orange peels, ready for our weekly toast. That particular week had introduced Kelsey and me to the term “social distancing,” the idea of quarantine (surely no more than six weeks, right?), and freshly empty toilet paper shelves at the grocery store. Even in that moment, we were aware that what we were experiencing was a moment —the significance of which would only reveal itself in the slow unfolding of time’s many surprises. We held up our cocktail glasses, each searching the air for a phrase with which to christen the week we had just left behind and the unwritten weeks ahead. And then, with an uncertain shrug, Kelsey said, “To whatever comes next.” Clink. That phrase came to mean many things to us over the course of 2020. In those first days, it was an uneasy joke: What could possibly come next? How bad could it be? By the time summer was in full swing, after tragedy compounded upon tragedy, it had turned to something more like dread: What have we gotten ourselves into? Is there a way out? As the year came to a close, the phrase took on tones of depletion, chronic fear, and desperation: Please let nothing else come next. We’re still reeling from this year we’ve had, and we can’t take any more. And yet, even as the days darkened into an unrelenting doom, we came to know a glimmering thread woven through those days, a strand quietly withstanding, holding fast, holding out hope in the painstakingly obvious observation that we don’t know what comes next. There Will Be Surprises explores hope's subversive interruption of despair at the frayed edges of our imaginations. Drew Miller As I reflect on my moments of deepest despair, I’m struck by the sense of sheer certainty that dominates the state of my mind and heart. Despair makes the outrageous claim of knowing everything that comes next—always only endless permutations of the wounds we’ve come to know so well, wounds that will never heal. On the other hand, the only humble condition needed for hope to grow is the mere admission of ignorance. Hope goes all-in on the unknown , because if any party is going to interrupt this ceaseless repetition of despair, it’s going to have to come from the outside, from beyond the scope of my imagination. It’s going to have to come as a surprise. Album art by Kyra Hinton Song by song, There Will Be Surprises explores hope’s subversive interruption of despair at the frayed edges of our imaginations. This theme has been baked into every decision: writing, arranging, and producing, as well as the visual art that accompanies the album. My last project was altogether grayscale, both sonically and visually—we left empty space in the mix and in the cover art. But, in keeping with the songs, There Will Be Surprises is in full color. Arrangements have expanded from a simple guitar-and-piano-based performance to include drums and bass, electric guitars, strings, and the beloved voices of my friends. And visually, I’m thrilled to welcome Kyra Hinton into this project, who has created an original painting for this album’s cover art. At every turn, color is filling the empty spaces. My hope for you is that wherever and whenever this album finds you, it may travel with you to the farthest reaches of your imagination, stand with you on the precipice, and help you to ask of yourself and of this world we live in, What comes next? Visit KickstartDrew.com to join me in making this album happen.

by the Rabbit Room The arts go far beyond words, melodies, and paintings. For instance, the art of gardening comprises much of what it means to faithfully cultivate God’s creation as bearers of his image—in Tolkien’s words, to “make still by the law in which we’re made.” One of our favorite parts of last year’s Hutchmoot: Homebound, then, was the garden, where we got to explore these themes in relation to the tangible tending and keeping of living things. This year, we’re excited to welcome to the garden Julie Witmer, Andrew Peterson, and Lanier Ivester. Rabbit Room Members, Guess What! We’ll have some fun, special Hutchmoot content for members again this year! As for what it is? You’ll just have to wait—or become a member—to find out. If you want to learn more about what membership means you can read about it on the blog or on our Become a Member page .

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan talks with Bill Haslam, two-term governor of Tennessee, two-term mayor of Knoxville, and author of Faithful Presence: The Promise and Peril of Faith in the Public Square . In a political climate marked by metastasizing outrage and division, Haslam found success by finding common ground and treating everyone—allies and opponents alike—with decency and respect. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 33 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.