Grandrabbit Prayers for Christmas and the New Year

Wayne Garvey is a retired Methodist pastor, a neighbor, and a dear friend who leads the Rabbit Room team in prayer each Monday morning. I’m not sure exactly when he started showing up, but over the last few years he’s become a fixture around North Wind Manor and things don’t seem complete without him anymore. We’ve even adopted him as the unofficial Rabbit Room chaplain and have dubbed him the “Grandrabbit.”

Wayne is always a delight to have in the room, but I especially appreciate the care he takes in writing a unique prayer for us as we start each week. He’s a wonderful writer and his kindness, care, and love for all of us (and all of you) come through loud and clear in his words. So this year, we asked him to turn his talents to writing these five prayers for Rabbit Room readers around the world.

Here’s to Whatever Comes Next

Today, with a mixture of sadness and joy, we announce that Drew Miller is stepping away from his position as Content Developer for the Rabbit Room. Our sadness is the natural result of waving goodbye to a teammate, and the joy is our right and proper acknowledgement of the many ways we’ve seen him grow while he’s been with us and our hope for what the future has in store for him.

Finding the Right Words: A Review of Little Prayers for Ordinary Days

As a child, I was terrified of being asked to pray aloud. It always seemed like other people—usually adults—knew all the right words and how to string them together. And even if I thought my everyday words were good enough, there was the problem of focusing so hard on finding those words that I was no longer praying with my heart, only my mouth. If you assume this is something I just grew out of, you’d only be partially right.

Symbols on the Doorframe

[Editor’s note: Our friends at Square Halo books have a brand new collection of essays called Wild Things and Castles in the Sky. Together, these essays form one cohesive guide for choosing books for children. Today, we’re grateful to share with you an essay from the book written by Shanika Churchville, in which she discusses the ways that the book of Deuteronomy offers a guide to families on how to discuss race with children.]

A Preface to The Last Sweet Mile

Since completing The Last Sweet Mile in 2015, I’ve always assumed I’d read it again someday. As of this moment, I have yet to do so. In the seven years since I signed off on the final manuscript, I’ve only read one chapter, “Shovel,” which I did for a roomful of gracious souls at Hutchmoot the year after publication.

Cracks in Creation: An Essay from Wild Things and Castles in the Sky

[Editor’s note: Our friends at Square Halo books have a brand new collection of essays called Wild Things and Castles in the Sky. Together, these essays form one cohesive guide for choosing books for children. Today, we’re grateful to share with you an essay from the book written by Ashley Artavia Novalis, in which she demonstrates how stories of suffering provide safe, creative spaces to experience empathy and process pain.]

New from Rabbit Room Press: The Last Sweet Mile

The Last Sweet Mile, Allen Levi’s memoir of great loss and enduring faith, is re-releasing in paperback edition through Rabbit Room Press this summer.

Feasts We Were Never Meant to Serve

My name is Leslie, and I built the Hutchmoot: Homebound experience. This could easily be an essay about the Rabbit Room staff giving their time to make the experience a reality (and we could regale you with stories worthy of such an essay!), but it’s actually a blog about how, after months of work, I stepped away from preparing the feast of Hutchmoot: Homebound in order to serve another feast altogether.

Imagination Boot Camp: An Essay from Wild Things and Castles in the Sky

[Editor’s note: Our friends at Square Halo books have a brand new collection of essays called Wild Things and Castles in the Sky. Together, these essays form one cohesive guide for choosing books for children. We’re grateful to get to share with you an essay from the book written by Katy Bowser Hutson, which explores themes of wonder, magic, courage, and how fairy tales remind us we’re part of something bigger than we could ever dream.]

Hutchmoot Podcast & Video: Story & the Child’s Imagination

The Hutchmoot Podcast features some of our favorite sessions recorded at our annual conference which celebrates art, music, story, and faith in all their many intersections. Today, it is our pleasure to share a session led by Walter Wangerin, Jr. and Sara Danger called “Story & the Child’s Imagination” from 2021’s Hutchmoot: Homebound, in both video and audio form.

The Zacchaeus Tree

I believe the highest praise one could receive of their art is, “it made me want to make my own.” You hear a song and it inspires you to pick up your guitar again. You see a painting and you dig out all your brushes and wipe off a dusty canvas. For me, as I finished chapter three of Andrew Peterson’s The God of the Garden, I closed the book with a lump in my throat and began to write the story of my own favorite tree.

Encanto and the Miracle of Empathy

One of the reasons I love fantasy as a genre is because of the inclusion of magic. In fantasy stories—the good ones anyway—magic can reveal the spiritual realities that we all sense in life but can’t see, and have no material frame to express.