Arise, Marasmius

Fairy rings, for all their mystique, are common at Berry College. In comparison to other universities, Berry isn’t abnormally eco-friendly, but its long-leaf pines, sweeping lawns, and petite, half-tamed deer attract an array of nature-loving students, as well as skunks, cats, tree frogs, herons, black grasshoppers, and fungi. In the mornings at Berry, when the sun gushes like a crushed blood-orange over the pines, a circle or two of white caps will often bloom on our lawns, while the fawns bend and graze around them. The mushroom caps are lush, as though sponging in the surrounding dew, but they are bordered by a necrotic zone, a shadow-ring of dead grass.

Mashed Potatoes & Visions

In the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there is a scene where Rory Neary cries into his mashed potatoes. He, along with several other people, have had an encounter with an extra terrestrial that has implanted a shared vision in their consciousness. The thing is, he’s not sure what the image from the vision is. He’s been trying to replicate it with anything he can find. He sees the shadow of it in pillow cases and shaving cream, but when he tries to form it, it’s just not right. As he shovels mashed potatoes onto his plate and begins to try to sculpt them into the image, his family looks on in horror. He starts crying, and then his son starts crying. Throughout the film he defends his odd behavior, saying “this means something”—even though he doesn’t know what.

Imagination as a Spiritual Practice (Part 2 of 3)

When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do was to play pretend. My friend and I created an entire town in her backyard. Our house was inside a meticulously de-cobwebbed corner of her crawlspace. The market area stretched around her back deck. The battlefield where we fought bloody wars against the tyranny of the king was the sprawling woods beyond. I was always good at playing pretend; I could see the town and hear the voices of our comrades in battle. The clashing of swords and the tang of fear were all real to me. I was so good at playing pretend that when I realized my imaginative thoughts would not be valued during discussions in school, church, or other “serious” settings, I simply pretended I wasn’t imaginative whenever speaking. In time, I wasn’t even imaginative when thinking of ideas while in those settings. I put my imagination in a box, only to be taken out under proper circumstances. As I grew older, those proper times for imagining grew fewer and farther between until eventually I forgot who I truly was. I pretended a part of myself away, but the problem was that no matter how good I was at pretending, that part of me was never truly gone.

artists & a new year’s view

Artists & is back! Join hosts Jamin Still and Kyra Hinton as they review the old year and walk into the new one, through the lens of visual artists.

Good Bad Art and Bad Bad Art

In college I had a housemate who was a DJ at a Christian radio station. He believed (and freely admitted) that the music he played at the radio station was mostly a watered down imitation of the pop and rock music that was his first love. He viewed it as an act of spiritual sacrifice to give up “secular” music for “Christian” music that he considered artistically inferior. At the time I didn’t know what to think of this pious sentiment. I have since decided that this kind of thinking is a threat to civilization.

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.

Stuff We Liked in 2021

No matter what your 2021 held, you were no doubt helped along by some comforting art, music, and story. You might have discovered an album that seemed to name precisely your own emotional landscape; perhaps you stumbled on a book that you could count on as an escape in the silent hours of the night; or maybe it was a TV show that kept you hooked from its pilot to its finale. Whatever it was, we want to hear about it! So please share in the comments section below. In the meantime, we’ve got some excellent recommendations from the Rabbit Room’s staff and blog contributors to get the conversation started.

The Light that Shines in Darkness

It was the 26^th of December, the second day of Christmas by the traditional reckoning, and I’d spent the balance of it on the couch, nursing the cold I’d sustained thanks to late nights and early mornings and running out barefoot onto the frost-touched grass for just one more branch of holly. But I couldn’t have been happier—behind me, a glad and golden Christmas Day crowned with laughter and the faces of those I love; before, a long week of indolence punctuated by last-minute gatherings with friends and small flurries of merrymaking.

There’s Joy in the House of the Lord

A justice centered, theologically rigorous, people-affirming, life-giving, and Spirit-breathed church is possible because God is still in the blessing and miracle-working business.

—Yolanda Pierce, In My Grandmother’s House

No One’s Forgotten About Us

A few months ago, I first learned about the phrase “trail magic.” It’s a thing out there in the hiking world to leave behind sustenance for other travelers at particularly difficult parts of the trail. You might reach beneath a bench as you are gasping for breath and find a much-needed granola bar and bottle of water. It might be that you stumble into a gorgeous view right as you were about to give up. It might be the encouragement from a fellow hiker that keeps you moving up a steep incline. It’s all trail magic: what you need when you need it.

“Emmanuel:” A Christmas Day Reflection by Thomas McKenzie

Merry Christmas from the Rabbit Room! In celebration, we’re sharing a Christmas Day reflection by Thomas McKenzie from his Advent devotional The Harpooner, accompanied by Sara Groves’s nativity song “Just Like They Said.”

Battle Hymn of the Body

[Editor’s note: As we enter into the celebration of Christmas, we’d like to share with you a profound piece from Shigé Clark that has grown more deeply pertinent since it was first published in 2019. In it, she explores the history of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in tension with the ways in which the gospel testifies that peace will come to earth.]