The Rabbit Room

Spirit & Sound, Part 5: The Preposition of Love

How accurate one has to be with one’s prepositions! Perhaps it was a preposition wrong that set the whole world awry.

—Charles Williams, The Place of the Lion

The truth is, I’m not much of a stickler for grammar. But I do love this passage from Charles Williams’ The Place of the Lion. I love the prospect of all of history teetering precariously, balanced on the back of a couple innocuous looking letters. And I love thinking about whether Williams could actually be right. Could a mere “without” where there should have been a “within”—or perhaps an “above” that should have been “below”—really set the whole world out of joint?

Hutchmoot Podcast: Pursuing Perfection

Michelangelo’s David is widely regarded as one of the most perfect works of art ever achieved. But the artist himself was neither the first nor the last to make his mark upon that famed piece of marble. In this episode, Russ Ramsey explores the story behind this magnificent sculpture and reveals how our longing to be in the presence of perfection can often weaken the very object we long to be near.

Gardening 101: Good Work is Boring

My friend Kirby and I were going to play a show in an upscale planned community, and I felt the need to prepare him. “Just be forewarned,” I said. “I’ve been here before. It’s a little weird.”

We pulled into the drive, puttering past a capacious barn that looked a more like a Colonial Inn than any working barn I knew. A dainty roadside sign proudly offered to direct us to “Goat Yoga.”

“I see what you mean,” said Kirby.

The Habit Podcast: Claire Holley

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with singer-songwriter Claire Holley.

A Path of Delight: Building the World of The Door on Half-Bald Hill

I’d forgotten how chaotic it feels in the midst of the research process. I look back at the path that brought me from an initial idea to a completed, printed copy of The Door on Half-Bald Hill and everything falls into sequence. The journey has a beautiful logic to it, as though I always knew where it would end and what it would become.

Spirit & Sound, Part 4: Sounding, Re-sounding, and the Antiphonal Shape of the World

I believe in the Holy Spirit . . . 
Together with the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified.

—The Nicene Creed

On a recent Saturday morning, a text message popped up on the Rabbit Room Staff thread. Leslie Thompson, one of our staff members, was in Kentucky with her husband, hiking. She texted to tell us that as they drove to the trailhead that morning, they had passed a handmade sign fixed to a tree. It read: “Is He Worthy?” A hundred yards or so further along there was another tree, and another sign: “He is.”

Knowledge, Mystery & The Spiritual Frontier

For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

—Habakkuk 2:14

A while back I finished reading The Worst Journey in the World, the account of the British expedition to Antarctica made by Robert Falcon Scott and his men more than a century ago. We had a mild winter where I live, so I felt I could handle a stretch of living vicariously in bleakness and frigidity. (You must realize this was shortly before COVID-19 upended our lives, so l never suspected that soon we’d need not look to Antarctica to find isolation, privation, endurance, and danger.) During the polar exploration craze of the early twentieth century, to challenge adversity was one way to “win renown.” Men who braved the ice were cultural heroes, maybe the equivalent to the early astronauts of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

The Resistance, Episode 21: Rosi Golan

Rosi Golan isn’t afraid to admit her fears.

Despite Rosi’s 12 years in the music industry, beginning with 2008’s The Drifter and the Gypsy, the Israeli-born singer-songwriter says some fears loom larger than ever before.