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[Editor's Note: This post resumes Mark Meynell's 5&1 series on classical music which ran in 2020-2021. In this series, we share five shorter classical pieces followed by one more substantial piece—all inside a given theme. With over 600 years of music to draw from, the hope is that you find a few old favorites combined with one or two new discoveries in each post.] Architecture and music don’t always feel like natural bedfellows. In fact, you might think they were mutually exclusive. One is characterized by solidity, permanence, and physicality; great buildings make us gaze in wonder in 360 degrees. The other is, by definition, fleeting and impermanent, supremely abstract (especially if without words) and invisible. So this playlist probably seems rather futile. As someone once said of all music criticism, ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture.’ But here’s the thing: not only is it entirely possible to say some intelligible and helpful things about music, but dancing actually is often about a sense of space and, yes, architecture. The German poet Goethe once said, ‘I call architecture frozen music.’ That is fascinating and revealing about both art forms. Music, especially if complex, often needs architectural metaphors to explain it; big themes or chord sequences might only begin to make sense if understood as the invisible infrastructure holding up a cathedral or great hall. But we’re also going one step further here. We’re considering music written about particular buildings or places, designed to evoke in fleeting sounds the solid grandeur of some great edifice (s). Think of this as a bit of a magical mystery tour. Má Vlast ‘My Fatherland’: I. Vyšehrad ‘The High Castle’ (JB1:112, 1872-4) Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884 , Czech) / Czech Philharmonic, Jiří Bělohlávek (cond.) Smetana: Má Vlast, JB1:112 - 1. Vysehrad Smetana was born around 100 miles east of Prague, today’s Czech capital, but then in a province of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He grew up speaking German but would become identified with the growing sense of Czech national identity and in time would be named the father of Czech music. His major work My Fatherland, is made up of six movements, each depicting something core to Czech culture (whether a place, legend, or event). This, the opening movement, describes Vyšehrad (literally ‘the High Castle’), a medieval fortress not far from Prague’s center, but not to be confused with Prague Castle itself. Vyšehrad now also contains a large cemetery for Czechia’s great and good, including Smetana himself. Two harps begin the proceedings, creating a sense of anticipation as well as evoking the castle’s origins deep in the mists of legend. They introduce a simple 4-note phrase (right) which is the castle’s signature in this and the later movements as well. Things speed up to give a sense of its history with military marches and assaults, culminating in its destruction. But it still has a life after that, a glorious ruin standing proudly on a bluff over the Vltava river (you can hear that in the music too), and still retains its grandeur and beauty. La Cathédrale Engloutie (No X. Préludes - Book 1, 1910) Claude Debussy (1862-1918, French) / Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano) Debussy: Préludes / Book 1, L.117 - 10. La cathédrale engloutie From the Czech lands, we are now whisked away to an island off the Brittany coast in northwest France. Or rather, we would be if L’Isle d’Ys existed today. It is the stuff of myth, an island town now lost forever to the ravages of the ocean, all because of the actions of a king’s wayward daughter. Debussy seems to hint at its great cathedral now fully submerged (engloutie), depicting the sea and mist through which we must peel back our eyes and ears to grasp what he can see. Debussy uses haunting, half-filled chords (for the musical nerds, often in parallel fifths) which seem unmoved by the movement of the water. The cathedral then seems to rise above the waves, giving us a glimpse of its majesty, only to fall back into the deep. But it is all so fragile and fleeting - these are just musical hints, after all. We are left wondering if perhaps we could also hear the ghost of a chanting choir accompanied by an organ and the tolling of the bell despite being far out to sea. And before we know it, the vision is lost in the fog. Quiet City (1940) Aaron Copland (1900-1990, American) / New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein (cond.) Copland: Quiet City We have now crossed the Atlantic and transported to the Big Apple, perhaps in the early hours or soon after dawn. Aaron Copland’s initial version was written as incidental music for a Broadway production of Irwin Shaw’s play of the same name. Unfortunately, that flopped so Copland rearranged it as an orchestral piece. The play’s protagonist is a young Jewish boy in New York who finds his trumpet to be his only solace and antidote to a profound loneliness. So the whole piece is constructed around the meanderings of a trumpet. It then seems to enter a melancholy conversation with a cor anglais, as if the young man hears his own echoes while wandering the deserted streets of Manhattan. Even if the piece is unfamiliar, you are bound to recognize all kinds of elements that subsequently became clichés of film music. Copland captures the peculiar isolation of modern urban life so powerfully, one in which we can be lonely despite being surrounded by millions of others. I can’t help but see some of the New York paintings of Edward Hopper when I hear this piece. His masterpiece Nighthawks (which is truly breathtaking if seen ‘in the flesh’) was only finished two years after this piece. Nor do I fail to imagine the glistening sunrise reflecting off soulless skyscrapers as the city yawningly begins yet another day. X. The Great Gate of Kiev, Pictures at an Exhibition (1874 Ravel orch. 1922) Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881, Russian) / Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth (cond.) Tableaux d'une exposition: 10. La Grande Porte de Kiev (Orch. Maurice Ravel) This track is one of several in a larger work portraying a visit to an exhibition of works by the Russian painter and architect Victor Hartmann. The last in the sequence is of a design Hartmann had drafted for a new gate for Kiev (today’s Kyiv, in Ukraine) which he hoped to be furnished with great Russian domes and a peal of bells. So we are listening to Mussorgsky aurally depicting the experience of seeing a painting which is itself a depiction of a great building yet to be imagined. It was originally written as a suite of piano pieces, but the music is so vivid that it is just asking to be arranged for the full spectrum of orchestral colour. In this case, it is the brilliant orchestration by Maurice Ravel (he of Bolero fame). It has it all: the grandeur, a sense of triumphant arrival, the pealing bells, the feeling that you are entering a great destination in its own right. As the music builds, I can just imagine a camera-drone slowly ascending into the air as it takes in more and more of the building and then the whole city. Carillon de Westminster (from Pièces de fantaisie (Suite No. 3; Op. 54) Louis Vierne (1870–1937, French) / Olivier Latry (organ of Notre Dame, Paris) [Notre-Dame] Carillon de Westminster, Louis Vierne Occasionally, a building already has its own jingle. The Houses of Parliament in Westminster, central London, certainly does. The chimes of the bells of Big Ben (or as it is now called, The Elizabeth Tower; and in fact, to be seriously pedantic, Big Ben is technically only the big hour bell that goes BONG) have been as universally recognizable as the Nokia ringtone or the old MS Windows startup would become. But its musical simplicity has made it very easy to evoke musically. It is comprised of four tones in two bars, played with developing permutations at each quarter of the hour. Then on the hour, we hear four variations followed by the deep bongs that tell the time. (If interested, you can find out more here!) Louis Vierne was one of organ music’s greats, as performer and composer (he was organist of Notre Dame in Paris for nearly 40 years). In this piece (carillon is French for a peal of bells), Vierne has great fun with the Westminster jingle. He lets the rest of the organ flutter and flurry, in and out of the main theme with increasing volume and complexity, reaching a glorious climax that demands its performer make the most of the organ’s vast range. One can’t fail to be blown away by the majesty and sheer power of both instrument and place. Symphony No. 8 in C minor (WAB 108) Anton Bruckner (1824-1896, Austrian) / Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelík (cond.) Rafael Kubelik "Symphony No 8" Bruckner This symphony is a mammoth, full of huge outbursts, glorious melodies, as well as the sense of vast open spaces. It is not a depiction of a building or place but is music on a vast scale (the whole piece lasts roughly 80 minutes, split into four movements). This is one of the compositions that has prompted many critics to herald Bruckner for creating ‘cathedrals in sound.' Bruckner was a deeply devout catholic from Upper Austria, the schoolteacher son of a schoolteacher whose home was filled with parental love but also tragedy. Aged only 13, he sat beside his father’s bed as he died of TB. He witnessed the deaths of 7 of his 11 siblings in infancy. But like his father, he helped out in the parish church on the organ and his musical ability enabled him in time to leave teaching. He never married, though would often have inappropriate and unrequited crushes on young girls; there is always the sense of a deep melancholy and social awkwardness around Bruckner. But he was a genius whose time would primarily come posthumously. This symphony is complex but it works best if you allow yourself to be fully immersed in it, to let the composer transport you into spectacular halls, over Alpine peaks and into unexplored corners of human experience. The four movements are: Allegro moderato (C mi)     14:40  mins Scherzo: Allegro moderato — Trio: Slow (C mi → C ma, A♭ma)    14:25 mins Adagio: Solemnly slow, but not sluggish (D♭ ma)     22:37 mins Finale: Solemnly, not quickly (C mi → C ma)     22:14 mins 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 the Hutchmoot Arts conference 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. 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I am a recovering cynic. I have been fiercely analytical, suspicious, and strong on speculative judgments. I could stare down a false motive at one thousand yards and fire off a critical word as soon as the target was in range. I am also a recovering romantic; in those rare moments when I found trust, I would go all in, and my imagination knew no limits in its restless search for perfection. This is not the place to bore you with the reasons, but my need for a deep defense against unruly emotions caused a split in me that had unintended consequences in my perception and experience of reality. In modernity, the analytical is highly valued, so I received little pushback. However, while essential for controlling unwanted emotions, my approach suffocated my experience of beauty, meaning, and God. This I discovered while traveling across Europe with friends. They were genuinely and spontaneously breathless as we looked at the Swiss Alps. They were experiencing beauty in a way I could not. Intellectually, I knew the sight was breath-taking, but I was still breathing. Cynical suppression made me suspicious of their joy. Though a slave to my own unresolved pain, I dimly understood there was something wrong with me and not with my friends. Fifteen years later, while walking through the Vienna Woods, I was stunned by the breathtaking beauty of a deep blue sky, emerald-green grass, and two trees bright with yellow and red leaves. As I caught my breath, I knew I had just encountered and experienced beauty. It was a sign of healing. Unbeknown to me, my capacity to feel and be vulnerable had grown in the intervening years. I further discovered the depth of my captivity to the hyper-rationalistic separation of experience and reason through a visit to a large Picasso exhibition in Vienna. I went with a Slovak friend who is an accomplished artist and photographer. We first wandered around, getting the layout of the collection, and then went our separate ways. I saw a vast and confusing picture. Not only did I not understand it, I did not have the first clue how to approach it. After some time, my friend came up behind me and said, ‘You are asking all the wrong questions,’ and then he walked away. How did he know what I was thinking? I caught up with him and asked what he meant. What he said opened a door into a new world of experience and understanding. ‘Some things you must experience before you can understand them,’ he said, then walked away again. I did not understand him but returned to the painting. Rather than asking questions, I stood before the painting and allowed it to touch me. My eye caught a single continuous brushstroke, about six inches wide, that went in an arc from the bottom of the painting to the top. I felt the energy needed to bend and stretch to paint it and the violence of the brushstroke. In that moment, the picture made sense, though I could not immediately articulate why. An excess of rationality had been keeping me from a deeper cognition. Academic distance had kept me from participation, which kept me from understanding. It would have been legitimate to analyze the picture through many lenses – the history of the period, the genre, the artist’s biographical details and his technical skills would have added much to an understanding of the painting. But putting aside the questions for a moment, being present to the picture itself, and allowing it to have its effect, gave knowledge that could not be found in any other way. Gradually, more profound thoughts and new relationships emerged. With practice, the inner eye of the imagination learns to respond. Reason can then explore this new perspective. But if the rational is prioritized at the expense of the experiential, such perception is blocked. As I later saw, my hyper-rationalism was a claim to omniscience. I knew, and everyone else did not, what was real and what was not. I came to see my romanticism as a claim to omnipotence. I would create the real—regardless of what reality said. I suppose beauty—or at least the hunger for it—saved me, along with a desire to know God experientially. Buried, as they were, in the hunt for first causes, principles, and dreams to live by. I was mirroring, in a somewhat extreme way, the schism that runs through Western thought between the humanities and sciences. On one side, the schism subtly prioritizes rationality and ignores or even suppresses the imagination, abstracting truth from the revealed text and thinking only in propositions. The subtle message is that we can trust in reason, but emotion (often conflated with feeling) is unreliable. This severs truth from lived experience and the energy required for change. The congregation listens to sermons on serious and majestic issues, sits and nods, stands, exchanges pleasantries, and departs with little discernible response and without the sustained emotional energy necessary for action. Propositions and abstract thought are helpful, even necessary, as a step towards understanding; they describe reality but are not reality itself. It is as if we go to the restaurant and examine the menu, discuss it with the waiter and fellow diners, and ponder the labels and pictures, but are then satisfied by dissecting and eating the menu rather than the meal. We become observers rather than participants when thinking about an object or event. Being time-bound, we necessarily think systematically in sequence and divide life into categories. But we experience life as a whole. Integration is essential for sound reasoning and healthy imagining. An integrated mind receives energy from emotion, direction and meaning from reasonable thought. The key to integration is humility, recognizing the limits of the human mind while remaining free to probe possibility. In my meditations on the Decalogue, it was first interesting, then helpful, to observe that the commandment governing the imagination—do not make false images—precedes the one governing language—do not take the name in vain (empty words of their meaning). Perhaps this is because we learn to see and feel before we learn to reason and articulate. The imagination creates space for new perspectives that are not immediately easy to express. The poet understands these intuitive expressions of truth. Through them, we comprehend at first by direct access what may be accessed later by reason. A healthy imagination describes the glories of life in ways reason can only grasp and articulate with time. I am less clever now; age does that to you. The mind ponders where once it raced ahead. Marsh Moyle works alongside L’Abri Fellowship in the UK but spent most of his life working with ideas and books in Central and Eastern Europe. Extracts from this article were taken from his book, “Rumours of a Better Country.”

I had moved house at least once a year for seven years straight. It is simply the way of life during higher education, the path I chose in my early twenties. When the short years of an undergraduate degree expire, one is sent into a seemingly endless game of musical chairs; if you’re not moving for a new degree or a new short-term job, you’re moving to find a cheaper place to live or a better roommate, or simply bending yourself to the will of campus housing. It became wearying, but as the years wore on, I began to strategize. In preparation for my move to each new domicile, I kept a few prized possessions, pictures, sentimental things, and valuable household items to be loaded into a single cardboard box. I’d collected these objects in hopes that one day I’d have my own home, where they could be of use or gather dust on a decorative shelf. “Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” wrote William Morris, and I tried to follow his maxim. But each year as another June rolled around, a less idealistic proverb formed itself in my mind: have nothing in your apartment which you do not know to be disposable, or believe to be easily transported. For me, the necessity of portability did not begin in college. If you were out to dinner with my mother and asked her where our family was from, she would grin and with a twinkle in her eye recite the (to me) familiar formula: “We’ve moved sixteen times, six times internationally” to the consternation of the listening party. Each of my siblings was born in a different state or country, and until my parents moved into our family home in Colorado, they had never stayed in one house for more than three years. The possibility that next year, next month even, I might need to move again has always been more than that to me; it is a probability, no, an inevitability. And so, when, during my studies, I settled into a flat for more than a year – twenty-seven months to be exact – it felt almost miraculous. But eventually my studies came to a close, and it was time to move again. I sat on the stoop of my flat that breezy September morning, a shambolic mess of half-packed cardboard boxes within, and sighed. I was sad in a tired way. I had grown to like the overgrown garden our flat shared with the letting agency below: the pear trees that were supposedly grafted from medieval trees, the overburdened trellis of roses with limbs arched in blossomed exhaustion, the tree that produced six perfect red apples each fall (no more, sometimes less), even the tropical tree with large, waxy leaves that seemed not quite at home in this gusty Scottish climate. I looked on them with a mixed pleasure. I envied the impassive stability of these trees; they would go on sprouting, blossoming, changing colors with the seasons, not caring whether I stayed or left, lived or died. Oh, to be so stubborn in one’s being and one’s needs, so sure of one’s literal place in the world. I am a potted plant, I said to myself. Always ready to be moved, never mingling my roots with those of my neighbors, a stranger to solid ground. This thought fell into my mind like a blunt object. Inside my house was a small potted plant that I had taken pains to keep alive during the final throes of completing my thesis, like a talisman of my own survival. I had been contemplating what to do with it when I left and considering throwing it away. It had taken on a wild, stringy appearance no matter how I groomed and clipped it, as though in protest against its modest pot, signaling to me that it wanted to get out and spread itself into welcoming soil. The metaphor continued to unravel itself within my knotted stomach. Perhaps I am a plant that has grown too large for its pot, a plant that if it does not find real soil to set its roots in soon will become awkward and sad, limbs reaching pleadingly toward the sun at the window, wanting to feel the worms and wetness of early morning, but always kept outside of such experiences. Lately, the sight of the plant had begun to inspire a plaintive despair in me; I had tried to plant indoor plants outside before, but they soon died, their roots shocked by the experience. Darkly, I thought to myself that perhaps I was the same. Perhaps after all these years of life with portable roots, I was no longer capable of natural rootedness. Perhaps if you tried to plant me in a particular place, I would shrivel up and die, not ready for the exposure of pure obligation to a place. I longed for a place to belong, to be entangled with, but felt in my bones incapable of such a thing. I am not the only potted plant. In centuries past, the odds were good that you would grow up, marry, and work within a short distance of the same place where you were born. Now it is less likely to be the case. Writing in response to the moral and economic desolations of World War II, Simone Weil drew on this metaphor in her book The Need for Roots, describing the modern condition as one of rootlessness, a lack of meaningful community, work, and belonging, a loss many of us feel in our souls. Some have tried to react to this sense of itinerancy constructively, by choosing a place to put down their roots for good. The notion is noble but comes with its own angst. It is very difficult to belong to a place, to not be able to escape it, to be bound to petty church politics, racist neighbors, the limitations of this place. And how does one choose a place? There is a loneliness of knowing that your rootedness is a chosen rootedness, not the inheritance of love and history. This was a pain I first put my finger on in the golden idealism that first comes with reading a Wendell Berry novel. After a period of wistful desire to take up farming and only use a typewriter, I began to feel a sassier question rising to my pen: it’s all fine and good, Mr. Berry, but what if I have no ancestral farm? And, after all, how far back do I have to look to discover the farm isn’t so ancestral after all? The feeling of rootlessness stretches much farther back past our present predicament. One credible description of history is a long legacy of displacement; of winning and losing land, of conquering and being driven out, of building homes and having them destroyed, by war or time, greed or boredom. Rootlessness is not merely a feature of the modern condition but also of the human condition. I felt this keenly when I first read Saint Augustine’s Confessions, where he touches this ancient wound in a surprisingly vivid way. The North African saint whose words and ideas have echoed down through the centuries described human nature as being characterized by a kind of restlessness. He famously writes in his Confessions, “We are restless until we find our rest in thee.” Augustine was what we might call a third-culture kid – the son of a Christian North African mother and a pagan Roman father – never quite fitting anywhere. Reading the story of his early life in Confessions is strikingly relatable to us sufferers of (post)modern malaise. As a young man he reinvented himself again and again. First, he fashioned himself as a hedonist and a social climber, intoxicated by romance and every pleasure that came his way. Made a bit sick by his own overindulgence, Augustine turned to a restrictive lifestyle, joining a gnostic cult with strict rules for living and high-minded ideas about the spiritual world. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, he fell in love, taking a lover with whom he had a child, and whom, by all accounts, he never gave up loving. In each act of his recounted life, there is a tragic sense of longing, unsatiated desire. When I read his fraught words, I can’t help but feel that Augustine, too, was a potted plant, withering with desire. But Augustine took a different metaphor as the interpretive key for his life: a journey, or, rather, an exile. Sarah Stewart-Kroeker writes “Augustine’s dominant image for the human life is peregrinatio, which signifies at once a journey to the homeland (a ‘pilgrimage’) and the condition of exile from the homeland.” All of life for Augustine was shaped both by this search for the homeland and the feeling of exile; he was a potted plant searching for welcoming soil. This feeling characterizes not only the ethos of his theology, but also the arc of his own personal narrative. In Augustine’s story, I found resonances of my own: the desire for rest and rootedness mixed with the sense of exile and strain toward a place of belonging. Here, I began to find myself mixing metaphors. I am a potted plant; I am a pilgrim. The image it presented to me was awkward and funny, like Tolkien’s glacially slow and meandering tree-people, the ents. What could flourishing look like for this mixed metaphorical life? How can one succeed as both a pilgrim and a tree? Of a promising person we say they are going places. We do not say that of a successful tree. A successful tree stays put. It has roots. It bears fruit. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that this mixed metaphor is at the heart of one of the Bible’s most famous passages: Psalm 1. This is what it says: Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams    of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand    in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. The blessed person walks, like a pilgrim (v. 1), but the blessed person is also like a tree (v. 3). At first the psalm begins as a simile, but it unfolds the likeness in metaphor; the righteous are not only like the tree, they are planted, yielding, prospering. At the heart of these two images is not only the (not) nature of metaphor but also some of the central tensions of what it is to be a human. We flourish in rootedness and fruitfulness, but that rootedness is always temporary, interrupted by death. And even in life we are driven by longings this world never seems capable of satisfying. By reflecting on the properties of trees and journeys, and carrying them over to the human condition, we might discover new ways of understanding ourselves. And even in the ruptures of the metaphors, those places where there is not correspondence, we might discover and articulate those ruptures and noncorrespondences in the human experience that cause us most discomfort and pain. In speaking about them, in giving them the form of images in our mind, we might find ourselves consoled, or drawn onward. The seemingly contradictory images of trees and journeys invite us to consider what it is like to be human, to flourish, to live well in the contradictions of human nature, with the desire for eternity in the confines of mortality, roots in the ground and branches arching their weary arms toward their heavenly home. From You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer by Joy Marie Clarkson (Bethany House Publishers, 2024), 13–16, 30–34. Used with permission. Joy Clarkson is a research associate in theology and literature at King’s College London. She is the Books and Culture Editor for Plough Quarterly and hosts a podcast called Speaking with Joy. You can read her regular writing on her Substack newsletter. She is the author of several books including You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer. Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash

Where is the intersection of architecture and faith? Is it in lofty barrel vaults or in stained glass depicting the saints? Is it in the transept, the steeple or the altar? Of course, the pairing of Architecture + Faith conjures up a sacred typology; one rooted in portraying scripture to those who could not read it for themselves. Throughout the ages, cathedrals, temples, synagogues, and mosques embodied a deliberate pictorial language to illuminate, educate and appeal to the senses conjuring an emotional response. Style, detail, and ornament were intimately attached to the particular culture and faith traditions of an era. With the Reformation and the proliferation of the printed bible, the language of sacred Architecture became more subtle and re-presented a humble, approachable, and restrained language. Without the compulsory pictures, houses of worship became increasingly centered on gathering to hear and participate in the spoken and sung word. Regardless of the nuances, complexity, or the current style of sacred Architecture, light prevails as a primary and timeless medium to stir the curious toward belief. Architecture holds the sublime capacity to pulse, encircle, lift, and inspire. In the composition of patterns, volumes, textures and frames the occupant is engaged in a participatory movement. Examples like Sagrada Familia, the Sistine Chapel, and Ronchamp are exceptional illustrations of the sacred typology that provokes a response, but are places of worship the only instances where an authentic faith might swell within the built environment? Everyday architecture, and the imagery surrounding it, are woven throughout scripture. We see references to the cornerstone, the foundation, the door, the lintel, the gate, the tower, the stable, and of course the house. Jesus conducted much of his ministry in people’s homes. His everyday, every moment ministry used a common agrarian and household language. His Gospel was not confined to the sabbath or the temple mount. It was on the road, at the well, at the table, at the bedside, in the breaking of bread and washing of feet, and even descending through a broken roof on a palette. And ultimately when Jesus left this earth, the veil in the tabernacle was torn from top to bottom and faith flooded beyond the temple courts into the everyday. God is not, and was never in fact, confined to things made of human hands, nor was He sequestered to sacred places. His gospel permeates and overflows, dwelling within and around those he has gifted with faith. In His humanity and with the Spirit, the sacred entered the everyday. Much has been written about the intersection of art and faith, and the subsequent creative disciplines of literature, poetry, music and songwriting, visual arts, and the traditions of functional pottery and fiber arts.  As an architect, I delight in these writings, and I can easily append the creative discipline of architecture.  However, I recognize that other creative people may not instinctively consider the critical role of the built environment as art or as an expression of faith. It is from this prompt to speak to fellow creators, and to find kinship in the gratitude we share for our artistic inklings, that I offer these thoughts on architecture and faith. I believe architecture is a living art, one in which we dwell and abide. It is an authentic and tangible touchpoint to who we are and the one who made us. It is a deep and beautiful truth that the one who builds the walls does so for another. It is a generative act of service. Both the creator and the user are affected, guided, held, and even changed as they engage and commune within the products of the builder’s craft. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus was asked by the Pharisees which is the greatest commandment of the law. His answer points toward a deep calling to not only commune with God with all our capacity but also to give these talents and skills as gifts to others: "And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with  all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37-39 ) The work of an architect is the stewardship of place, people, and resources. Through a disciplined and iterative practice of listening, reclaiming, sketching, modeling, editing, collaborating, and finally re-presenting and binding, the architect creates a structure that frames and supports what is possible. In the words of Tim Keller, a faithful architect can “rearrange raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish.” The architect participates in the divine act of creation, answering a deep calling while gifting the vessel to another. The built environment apart has a spiritual life all its own. Architecture is a living art. In place-making an architect may try her best to anticipate and speak to a function or occupant, but the walls and emptiness exist in time and space apart from the architect. They wait for light, for gathering, for souls to abide. The doorframes may prompt, the steps may lift, the windows may frame, but the built environment finds beauty in both its intention and its possibility. Christians believe the imprint of our maker is in our hearts, and because we are each unique this imprint primes us for distinctive ways to abide and see. My pastor, Michael Flake, describes this mark as Christ’s blood on the doorframe of our lives. As we peer through these frames— whether it be at the pub, the workshop, the kitchen sink, or from our porch at the end of a day's labors—the built environment faithfully frames our every day and our every moment just so. Where is the intersection of architecture and faith? It is in the arc of a garden gate and the boot shelf in a mudroom. It is in the window seat of a nursery, the bend of a stair, and in the morning light across a breakfast table. In the realm of this present garden, faith meets us at the door, in the threshold, in washing and cooking, place-making, and in our labor and rest. The places authentically crafted for these actions house our everyday lives. As we enter a place we become part of it, we are changed by it and in fact, participate in the making of and purpose of it. Nicole Perri is originally from the foothills and lake region of New Jersey and grew up in the woods and creeks exploring and creating worlds. After considering careers in Art and Music, Nicole felt called to architecture and attended Clemson University where she received a BS and a MA in Architecture. Nicole currently focuses her practice on Residential Architecture and Community and Arts Projects in Davidson and the fabric of the Lake Norman region. She crafts designs to enrich the spirit and health, and strives to build identity, connection, memory and light into each unique proposal. Her writings and thoughts about Architecture + Faith can be found at Rooted and Flying. Photo by Inside Weather on Unsplash

[Editor's note: This lecture was given at L'Abri Fellowship. You can also read Ellis' new book on the topic, Comprehensive Spirituality.] What is more spiritual, peeling a potato or praying? If we were to grow spiritually, what would that look like? Do we become more transcendent and less visible as we become more spiritual? This lecture explores the spiritual nature of people as originally created by God and the spirituality of the resurrected Christ. In it, Ellis Potter unpacks what it means that Christ is lord over all of life, not just some small "spiritual" segment of it. Ellis Potter is a Christian minister, counselor, and teacher. He worked for many years with Francis Schaeffer at L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and was the pastor of the Basel Christian Fellowship for ten years. He has published several books and teaches all over the world. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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.

If you plan to be a writer for any significant amount of time, you will inevitably hit a stage that I call the “creative doldrums.” Perhaps you’ve already been there. A day, then a week, then a month goes by, and you haven’t written anything. Not a word. There is nary a gust of wind in your artistic sails. You might start to worry, then panic, then go into an existential tailspin over whether you were ever a creative person to begin with and whether you will ever have anything to say again. This kind of emotional crisis isn’t helped by the kind of world we live in, especially if you are an artist with an online presence. The same social media technologies that allow us to share our work with more people than ever before are also insatiably hungry monsters that will punish us if we don’t constantly feed the beast. The mantra of the algorithm gods is update or be made irrelevant. You have to stay current, keep your fans reminded of who you are and what you’re doing, lest you fall down to the bottom of the feed, or even show up on it at all. As you can guess or might already know through personal experience, this can be a pretty nasty headtrip, especially if you rely on your artistic work in some part for your vocational income. So what are some things we can do as artists and creators to ride out our own creative lulls? As someone who’s been writing for over twenty years and has faced my own share of dry spells, I’ve learned a few things that will hopefully be helpful. Clarify your expectations There’s nothing like a crisis to help you confront and clarify what it is you actually want out of a situation. I think it’s important for us as artists through the various stages of our career to revisit what our expectations are. Do you want to be a traditionally published author? Are you writing and sharing just for the joy of it? Do you want a social media following? Are you okay with churning out lots of less-than-your-best work, or are you the kind of person that really needs to perfect something before releasing it to the world? Asking these questions of yourself can be tremendously helpful. Remember that you are not just your art If you’ve wrapped up your identity and worth in your creative output, hitting a creative lull is really going to mess you up. I think this can be a particular temptation for young, ambitious artists (I’ve been there). If you want to be a healthy artist long term, you are going to have to find a way to recognize the value and importance of your artistic endeavors while also detaching your ultimate identity from how much art you are able to produce and how people receive it. That probably means having a good therapist and good friend and family relationships around you that remind you of your inherent worth, apart from what you create. Remember that sometimes life just happens As author and speaker Jon Acuff has said: “Give yourself grace.” His point is that when we are working on a creative dream, we can often be incredibly hard on ourselves and not recognize the realities of life. Sometimes things just happen that take up our time and energy, and we can’t help it. If you are married and also have kids, or you are bi-vocational, sometimes art is going to have to take a back seat to your other obligations. We won’t do ourselves any favor by further beating ourselves up over our lack of creative output. Recognize that creativity has seasons Related to the previous point is the fact that we must recognize the waves of the creative life. No one can constantly create and create well. Life is a balance of work and play, rest and labor. Creative projects, both large and small, have a cycle of inception to realization. There’s a time to receive and a time to give. Sometimes you need to be refilled before you can share with the world once again. As Madeleine L’Engle wrote beautifully in her book Walking on Water, “When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening. I will never listen to what the Spirit is telling me, telling me of the death of trees, the death of planets, of people, and what all these deaths mean in the light of the love of the Creator who brought them all into being; who brought me into being; and you.” Eat a good creative diet Creativity is just as much about input as it is about output. I find that other art and beauty helps inspire my art. This might look like reading other poets, good fiction, visiting art museums, seeing great films, listening to good music, taking walks in nature and cities, and visiting inspiring places. Creativity often works like a mental compost pile or a good soup, you’ve got to dump good stuff in there and then let it simmer for a while. Keep a long-term perspective One of the best pieces of creative advice I’ve ever heard was something author Jonathan Merritt said at a writing conference I attended years ago. During a panel discussion, he described the writing life as a “long obedience in the same direction” (quoting Eugene Peterson quoting Nietzsche). We are often more influenced by the culture of “now” than we realize, and we are tempted by delusions that our artistic efforts will attain swift success. The reality is usually more of a long, patient grind of quiet labor. Some may take this as a discouragement, but I believe this can actually be tremendously freeing, because it releases us from the tyranny of the urgent and the nigh-impossible weight of instant success. Besides that, keeping a long-term perspective helps us see those dry spells for what they are, seasons in a long vocational life of creative work. Continue to “show up” Now, some of these suggestions could easily be transformed into subtle excuses to justify laziness. Maybe your life is just busy right now—or maybe you’ve poorly managed your schedule. Maybe the well has run dry—or maybe you haven’t done anything to refresh it. Even when ideas aren’t flowing smoothly, or hardly flowing at all, it’s still important to develop a habit of “showing up.” That might mean setting aside some time each day to work or brainstorm, or heading off to a place where it's easier to quiet your mind. Or, it might just involve being ready for when the ideas return. I share all these bits of advice with you because I’ve found them helpful in my own life. For me, thankfully, the creativity always shows up again when I practice patience, take some pressure off myself, fill up with good things, and continue to “show up”. May these ideas be helpful for you in your own creative dry spell. Remember in the end that it is not about how many poems we wrote or books we published, but whether we offered some small measure of truth and beauty to the world. Chris is a community college English professor in Massachusetts, and is an arts and culture writer whose works have appeared in publications such as, Tweetspeak Poetry, The Curator, The Molehill, and currently on The Rabbit Room. Chris is also the author of several books of poetry, including his latest collection Winter Poems. In 2018 he helped co-found The Poetry Pub, an online community for poets. He enjoys walking in the woods, visiting coffee shops, and poking through used bookstores with his wife Jen. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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. Photo by Math on Unsplash

This liturgy is taken from Every Moment Holy Volume 3 from Rabbit Room Press. You can find more liturgies like these at EveryMomentHoly.com. By Dorothy Sayers Victorious Christ, whom we these many years have crucified and with sweet spices laid in the strong bands of the grave: Appear, thou risen from the dead, and come, and go before us. Thou of our fragrant memorials  hast no need; thou art alive, thy wounded feet are swift upon the ways of the world, thy smitten hands outstretched for the healing of the nations. Startle us awake, immortal Splendour; open our eyes to see that already the stone is rolled away from the sepulcher. Quicken our ears to hear the proclamation of thine angel. Fill us with thy Holy Ghost, that is the breath of life, for our false gods are sick and dying, and for them is no resurrection. Thee only the tomb cannot hold; in all the earth none liveth but only thou, that with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest, world without end. Amen. 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.

We want North Wind Manor to be a hospitable place for everyone. We had such a great response from Open Hours: Fika (Swedish coffee break) each Wednesday from 1:00 - 4:00 that we later added Quiet Hours: Stilla (Swedish for quiet and peaceful) each Friday morning from 9:00 - 12:00. Fika, with its community, coziness, and intentional pause brings to the space a vibrant hum of conversation, laughter, and music, whereas Stilla quiet hours is to provide a calmer space for deeper focus. These times have been so wonderful and each week offers a different group and energy based on those who choose to join in. That said, we’ve had a sad ache in our heart of hearts knowing that something is still missing. So it is with great joy that the Rabbit Room proudly presents…. Open Hours: Pyjämaslëëpövr (Swedish for slumber party). Although American culture has no exact cultural equivalent, the Nordic countries have a long and deep tradition of Pyjämaslëëpövr. It fills the mysterious liminal space between a junior high girls' slumber party and a networking cocktail party for local professionals. Starting at midnight each Tuesday night and wrapping up with a collective primal scream as the sun rises in the east. We’ll be eating Köttbullar, round hand-formed meatballs made from pork, slathered in lingonberry jam, Pannkakor, pancakes slathered in lingonberry jam, and Surströmming, fermented herring slathered in lingonberry jam, while we dance the Dansa runt stolen, and play round after round of our favorites, Kalle Anka-leken and Spelet med äpplet, till we pass out from a mixture of exhaustion and glee. And hey, if a pillow fight breaks in the midst of all that, that would be seen as a success as well! So pull out your pajamas, don your Svenska mössan, grab your favorite stuffed animal and come on out ya’ll! [Editor's note: now that April 1 has passed, I am at liberty to add the disclaimer that this was an April Fool's joke. While we celebrate whatever Scandinavian-inspired traditions you get up to between midnight and dawn... please don't do them at North Wind Manor.]

Throughout Lent, Andrew has been sharing his Lenten Sonnets on the Rabbit Room Poetry Newsletter. We're publishing the final sonnet here and you can read the rest (and get every other poem we publish delivered to your inbox) on the poetry newsletter. Happy Easter! Lenten Sonnet | March 26, 2018 by Andrew Peterson The neighbor’s sheep went missing days ago. She had posted a message on the board For the community: “Please help. I know They’re nearby. Four sheep.” Offered a reward. Then I looked out my back window and saw All four on the hill. I called the neighbor With the news. She squealed till her voice was raw, And kept thanking me over and over. A minute later I saw her sprinting Out of the brush and up the hill, weeping, Clapping, calling, chasing, unrelenting In her love for what was in her keeping. We live our lives and never really know How loved we are, or how far love will go. In addition to being the founder of the Rabbit Room, Andrew Peterson is a singer, songwriter, poet, and the author of the popular children’s series, The Wingfeather Saga. This poem is part of a series of sonnets for Lent and Easter. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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.

My senior year of high school, I started taking Japanese language classes. It was partially on a whim, and partially because I had recently discovered the artwork and writing of Makoto Fujimura, and bit by bit, it was turning my world upside down. But that is a story for another time. The important point for now is that I fell in love with the language. I loved the writing systems, one of which is a thousand years older than the Great Wall of China. I loved the way the words lilted and folded together and rearranged themselves. I loved the rich, unique tradition of storytelling and deep metaphor, and I also think I loved the difference from my own language. Nothing felt familiar, everything was new, and something about that beckoned to me. Suffice it to say, I kept studying after high school, and all the way through college. As soon as I graduated, I took a five-part Japanese proficiency test, and was preparing to go to Japan for at least a year to keep learning. But fate (or rather Covid-19) had other plans. So, I put down my textbooks, dusted off another dream, and moved to Nashville. Just as the many millions of people who have gone to school to learn a language, only to put it away and return to normal life, I watched as a once proud skill slipped away, one word or turn of phrase at a time. I lost myself in other pursuits and truly have loved my life here, but I missed my other world. I felt as though I was losing a little of my sense of wonder as my ability to speak Japanese drifted away. This part of my story would appear to be ended, but I think one of God’s favorite pastimes is surprising us. About a month ago, without warning, something familiar and strange stirred inside of me, and without knowing why, I started to study Japanese again. It came back slowly, painfully. Words and writing systems that I had once thought were mine forever looked like strangers again. They had to be dug up, dusted off, and breathed into once more. But something happened as I  re-learned words I had forgotten—they began to replace old, tired, overused English words in my heart. The last few years have not been easy ones and words like trust, protection, faith, patience, grace, and many other “religious” words had gained blood-letting edges. Without knowing it, I was desperate for new ways to speak to God or about God, desperate for ways to approach Him that didn’t hurt so much. One word at a time, I started to pray in Japanese, think in Japanese, process pain, frustration, and despair in Japanese, and it seemed to me that God was using those same words in return when he spoke to me. English words that had been used against me, had been used too many times and now meant nothing to me, or that hurt to hear because I had trouble believing they were true anymore, were replaced, made new. Perhaps by all rights, nothing should have changed. The Japanese words signified the same things as the English, but something was different. All I know is that 神様はあなたを守るmeans more to me than “God will protect you” even if the translation is the same. But in truth, the translation is never exactly the same, and perhaps that is part of the magic. I needed ways of expressing love, pain, sorrow, or overwhelming joy that English does not possess. I needed more ways to speak to God. I needed more ways that He could speak to me. There are thousands of ways to find deeper faith or renewed meaning, but I believe that one way is literally to use new words. It does not take long to exhaust the acceptable language of religion, at least in my experience. I’m not telling you to go learn Japanese (necessarily), but I think there is a reason so many people turn to Ancient Greek or Hebrew to find new meaning, new impact from texts that have been read to many times or misused in ways that are irreparable. A new language, a new way of seeing things, sneaks past our “watchful dragons,” or at least it sneaks by mine. Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the back of a local international church watching a Chinese New Year celebration. In between the dumpling contests and traditional dances and Kung Fu demonstrations, the church choir stood up to sing “This is My Father’s World” in Mandarin and it nearly brought tears to my eyes. The only word I know in Mandarin is “thank you” and I’m pretty sure I say it wrong, but all of a sudden, I wanted to know more. I wanted to sing about the gospel with these wonderful, welcoming people, in words I had never heard but that pointed in a new way to something as familiar and mysterious as breathing. No one language can contain the entirety of a truth, the perfect essence of beauty, the full unveiling of light and shadow, but each holds a piece, a sliver that over the millennia, has become something unique and necessary to the Christian faith. Perhaps a truth is more beautiful for being shattered among the nations, for every language, every culture refracts a facet of it back into the heart of the one who hears and understands. The blessing of Babel is that there is always more. There are always new ways to rediscover the glory of God, for the wonder of his Word to be revealed once again. There are always more words. Every idea, every parable, every instruction, every word of comfort has perhaps become more by being broken apart and remade. I cannot learn every language. I can’t understand every subtlety and metaphor that makes a familiar truth unique to each subset of the created world, but I do know that God is using the varied words of his many people to draw me back to himself, to reawaken the mystery of a thing that I could no longer look in the eye. If Christ plays in 10,000 places, I am just grateful that I have found a new way in which he sings. Carly Marlys (Anderson) is a poet and aspiring author out of Nashville, Tennessee. She recently published her first poetry collection entitled Dust and Dew. Her work has also appeared on the Rabbit Room blog and in The Echo literary journal. You can find more of her poetry at carlymarlys.com or on Instagram @carlymarlys. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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. Photo by Conor Luddy on Unsplash

Before being voted “most likely to join the military” at my pacifist, Mennonite high school (read into that what you will), I had the opportunity to visit the truly peaceful grounds of a Benedictine monastery. Field trip. I wish I could tell you about the deep, spiritual experience it was to be in such a solemn environment, and how the stillness of the place struck a chord in me that’s resonated since. In actuality, great student that I was, I remember only two things about our time there: the communion-flavored grape juice we had at lunch, and the following conversation. A few of the monks had graciously lent their time to showing us the place and teaching us about the monastic life. “Ora et labora,” we were told, was the sum of it all: prayer and work, balanced. They went on to describe their practices for deepening the faith and interceding for their surrounding community, but I was already stuck, left in the dust with a curiosity. I raised my hand. “The roots are the same,” I pointed out. “What?” said the good friar. “The word ‘ora’ meaning ‘prayer’ is the suffix of ‘labora’ meaning ‘work,’” I said. “Why is that?” Silence. Then a stutter. “It’s just—” he began. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just ‘ora et labora’: prayer and work.” I didn’t buy it. Still don’t as a matter of fact. I’ll go so far as to say I wouldn’t believe the holy man even if these Latin sound-a-likes were only so by sheer chance. What I mean is this: I don’t agree with the statement, “it doesn’t mean anything.” Words have depth to them, entire worlds holed up in their cores, and I’d rather break the shell to see what’s inside than take them for granted. Words matter. In Owen Barfield’s History in English Words, the Inkling chronicles through the lens of said tongue the tendency toward “internalization” in Western language and thought. It’s fascinating to see, in words alone, shifts in consciousness over time toward the individual and away from the community, away from integration and into the arms of reductionism; praising comprehension, foregoing apprehension. All this is to say again that words matter. They shape the way we think. Remember. Live. And it doesn’t take a long look around to see the ways that “internalization” has shaped our perception of the meaning of our comings and goings. I don’t mean to level any blame at the good monks we visited that day. I simply had to look elsewhere to find the answers I sought. And while ora et labora may not have any special significance for my life today (I never did join the Benedictines, Mennonites, or the military, for that matter), what does is whether I go about slinging worlds of meaning left and right without a second thought. Someone might just get hurt; or maybe worse, kept from seeing what’s shining beneath the surface of things: distracted by the rote of our busy lives and language. “Utter words,” says Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, “as though heaven were opened in them and as though you did not put the word into your mouth, but as though you had entered the word.”1 If there are worlds in our words, their each and every utterance is an unfolding meaning which we step into, co-creating as we go. If we are to realize—in the fullest sense of the word—that “all matter is radiant of spiritual meaning,” we’ll often need new language for the task, which is to say new and renewing perspective. This is a driving reason I’ve come to appreciate poetry more over the last few years (thanks for the kickstart, Malcolm Guite) and find even dead languages fascinating. There’s nothing wrong (and a lot of good) in having the ground under my feet shaken a bit from time to time, and having my assumptions challenged. The more the better, I say. Come to think of it, these Latinates—courtesy of our kind, Benedictine hosts—may have plenty of significance for my life today after all. Breaking the Shell Interestingly enough, though I haven’t found any indication these words are truly connected (please message if you can!), following an etymology of labora back to Proto-Indo-European ultimately accounts only for the “lab” in the word: something taken or gained.This might just leave room for a potential combination of roots — perhaps with one such as, oh, I don’t know…ora: of the mouth. Please note: there may not be a true relation here. I’m not trained for this arena by any stretch of the imagination. I’m an amateur through and through, but am happy to toy with a little mystery. It makes sense though, doesn’t it? Ora refers to the mouth (or in the case of our Benedictine slogan, what comes from it), and lab-ora refers to what is taken for the mouth, or the means to take for the mouth: exempli gratia, to labor. Food for thought. For those bearing with this etymology, then, one could interpret the roots of ora et labora as “what the mouth produces, and what it consumes.” And that has plenty to bear on my life. While “prayer and work” can be watered down to dry practice (been there), I think there’s something deeper going on here with these words. First, what is taken for the mouth; consumed. What narratives do I give credence to? Are they centered on my own navel-gazing realities, meanings, desires, and perspective? Or are they stories of mystery and connectedness with others, the world, and the Reality that surrounds me and of which I am only a part and player? And then there’s ora: what is produced. Are my language and living subtle and deep, rich and dangerous, pregnant and healing to those in my life? And what about to myself, who must step into the meanings that come from my mouth? Or on the contrary will I be known as trite, precise, and busy, my words as reduced and empty? Meaningless? Shallow? I land on different sides of these questions every day, but I hope and strive to know the worlds I create with my words leave a little room for wondering and the wondrous, for re-humanization and community and being known, and for more grace in my language and living, which is to say in my ora et labora. Perhaps this is the heart of its Benedictine sister-phrase, laborare est orare: work become prayer. Our rote become poetry. Life become living. Here’s to more of it for all of us. Tyler Rogness is learning to live on purpose, and to sink into the small moments that fill a life. He loves deep words, old books, good stories, and his wonderful family who put up with his nonsense. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Ekstasis Magazine, the Amethyst Review, The Habit Portfolio, and the Agape Review. More of his work can be found at awakingdragons.com. Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

A Review by Jessica Morris The best creative people make you feel known—their words, music, or movement crosses a medium and glides into your soul. It’s why U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name,” still causes your skin to prickle during the opening chords, and why you carry a sense of expectation when you open The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe again. A divine exchange takes place—and we go from feeling known by the artist or author, to feeling utterly known by the Creator of all things. If you ever needed a reminder about the divinity of this moment, or the fact it can occur in the minute details of our lives, then Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth’s Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much is like medicine. Dropping the names of Charlie and Andi in Nashville is like saying, “I saw Keith Urban at Whole Foods in Brentwood over the weekend.” Who hasn’t? Inevitably, if someone doesn’t know them as friends, creatives, teachers, or acquaintances, then they surely know their creative work. They have written at least six books between them, produced hundreds of albums, and Charlie has recorded many of his own. Add in Grammy awards, their role as keynote speakers, and their time running the Art House in Nashville, not to mention decades of marriage—these two are prolific. Having never met the Ashworths, I only knew them through their works. It was a joy to find out that Peacock was simply a stage name, and that Charlie is ‘Chuck’ at home. But I digress. In any case, I didn’t know what to expect when I opened this book. Advice? Wisdom on how to ‘make it’? Some thoughts about how to become like Switchfoot (or not, if you’re not in a rock band. I’m not). That is not what I found. Because opening Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much transports you to the front door of the Ashworth’s house. But you’re not there for a lesson on how to write a book or an award-winning song—you’re there for dinner. And as soon as you ring the doorbell, Charlie and Andi swing open the door with wide smiles. You’re one of many guests, with Christ at the head of the table. As they say in their prologue “We want to be where Christ the Redeemer is—we need that proximity always. For us, it may be said that the whole of this life is either moving in the direction of Jesus and the redemption on offer, or away from it. There is no standing still.” Are you willing to sit at a humble table and eat a meal with Christ and his followers? To ponder the intricacies of what life means in 2024 as one who professes to follow Christ, and to hear stories about the grand, tragic, and mundane ways the Ashworths have walked with Him for more than four decades? If the answer is yes, then welcome to the Ashworth’s table. Andi will serve you a bowl of piping hot soup and homemade bread, and you will leave on the receiving end of a divine exchange. In many ways, this series of letters is akin to seeing Charlie and Andi pass the baton to the next generation of creators. The wisdom they impart – about young love and saving a marriage, work/life balance, hospitality and burnout, and yes, the nuance of being a musician and a Christian, makes it required reading for anyone in the creative sphere. Readers are moved to authenticity, as they read about the Ashworth’s journey to addiction and sobriety, encountering Jesus and having a young family. Readers are moved to live with conviction, as they discuss what it means to contribute to the spiritual life of a city and their neighbors. Readers are moved to sanctification, as they read about how the term Christian has been co-opted in the public space and are reminded God's calling is so much bigger than human limitations. Readers are moved to quietness, as they learn about Andi’s commitment to writing, sabbatical, and remembering the small moments so she can serve her community. Readers are moved to faithfulness, as they hear about God’s provision in helping them set up the Art House, sustain it, and then pass it on to the next generation. Readers are moved to awareness as Charlie confronts paternalism and toxic individualism, pledging to winnow them out of his identity as part of his life’s work. And readers are moved to self-compassion, as the Ashworths talk about living with chronic illness, aging parents, healing from childhood abuse, entering therapy, and being present. It is one thing to say these things, and even discuss them with other creators. But how do we do them? Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much isn’t a self-help book, but Charlie and Andi’s empathy do give us the tools to figure out the next steps. As creators, the line between public and private lives is always blurry. No one understands this better than Charlie and Andi—tangible art aside, they lived with an open-door policy for years when they opened and ran The Art House in Nashville from 2001. The Ashworth’s stories are a reminder that we are driven to create out of the fullness (or at times lack of) in our private life—our relationship with God, with each other, and with the world. Yet the tension of how much to share, how it will be received, and if this will wound us, is always at odds with our desire to be transparent. Add in the additional elements of being a Christ-follower, and for many of us what it looks like to be this in an industry labeled ‘Christian,’ and the line becomes razor wire. Charlie and Andi graciously remind us out of their own woundedness, that God’s grace is sufficient for every season of life, no matter how publicly accessible, grandiose, unexpected, minute, or imperfect our circumstances may be. We don’t have to strive or push through—in fact, we shouldn’t (just read the latter chapters about Charlie’s reckoning with chronic headaches and how they stemmed from childhood trauma). Instead, we can take it moment by moment. Or, as Charlie and Andi say, “moving our imperfect selves toward the redemption He extends to all”. Charlie and Andi have set the table with this book, and their front porch light is on. Give yourself an evening to be refueled, nourished and nurtured with their words. Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much is published through W Publishing Group and Thomas Nelson and is out now. Special thanks to UTR Media who originally posted this article and gave us permission to share it with our readers. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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.

I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. Not compared to the average person. I mean, I don’t think so. After the other day I most assuredly should not spend more time there if this is how I’m going to behave. I decided to check on a friend on FB. It had been a while. Perhaps it would be good to “like” some photo or post. Let her know I was thinking of her. The first thing I saw on her feed was a stunning photo, like National Geographic quality. She was seated on a shining chestnut-horse, standing  atop a cliff overlooking the  Rio Grande Valley 1000 feet below with the Sangre de Christo mountains of New Mexico radiant in pale pink and rose in the distance. The Blood of Christ. In the warm sun she only wore a light jacket. A wave of jealousy like an ocean roller boiled me over. I wanted that. Why did she have this privilege and not me?  Why did she deserve such a beautiful vacation? It had been days since we had seen the sun in Minnesota. Between snow and rain, every day was chill and gray. Why must I pull on a down jacket every time I opened the door and run to the henhouse? I was jealous. Feeling sorry for myself, my eyes misted over. It only took seconds to begin real crying—what was this ugliness? This envy? Why should I begrudge the beauty and vacation she was enjoying? I know how wrong this is. Discouraged, I wondered how I could possibly change my instincts; my envy has risen unbidden. In any case, that’s nothing compared to murder, rape and other kinds of mayhem. But God does not rationalize. The last commandment: Thou shall not covet. That evening Anita and I spontaneously made a fire outdoors. Gathered downed branches and twigs from the ravine. Found last summer’s hot dogs in the freezer. Marshmallows. Red wine. $10 worth of firewood from Kwik Trip. Three hens hanging on the grass beside us. Pecorino and Brie pecked up the last of the ketchup on my plate and wiped their beaks on the grass, then panicked and tore in opposite directions to hide from a large hawk floating overhead—they spotted it way before we did. As the sun set and the air chilled, wrapped in scarves and blankets Denis read his latest limerick, as we chatted into the night until the wood turned to glowing coals and hot ash. “My beloved just bought a new laptop, And hoped she could just use it nonstop. But to update each setting Caused a great deal of fretting, So we are headed right back to the shop.” That night  I lay in bed reluctantly processing the day knowing I needed confession. My thoughts about that friend were ungracious. Unkind. What have I to complain about? I have an abundance of love from Denis. Friendship with our housemate, Anita. That very day we had wood to build a fire. Some don’t. Blankets kept us warm. Simple food to enjoy. Pet chickens that make me laugh. Should I complain when so many in the world would opt for just one of these things? Don’t misunderstand. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a horse and a mountain view. It’s that this heart of mine was awash in envy and needed restoration. As I write this, we are entering the time of the church year called Lent. How timely for my soul! It is the period of fasting and regret for one's sins observed from Ash Wednesday until the dawning Joy of Resurrection Day. During Lent our eyes and hearts turn to the Cross of Christ in a special way to be reminded of what it cost Jesus to redeem people like me whose offenses may be hidden from you, but not from God. During Lent, the Bishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya ends each service with a blessing and asks everyone in the congregation to use their bodies to pray. Here in Minneapolis where we worship each Sunday we, too, have learned our African Brother’s blessing. We are invited to sweep our hands toward the cross above the altar with each refrain and then, with the last refrain, together we sweep our hands toward heaven. All our problems of this life on earth: We send to the cross of Christ. All the difficulties of our circumstances: We send to the cross of Christ. All the devil’s works from his temporary power: We send to the cross of Christ. All our hopes for wholeness and eternal life: We set on the risen Christ. Yes. That’s it. It’s all I need. Margie Haack and her husband, Denis, are co-directors of a ministry, Ransom Fellowship, which helps Christians engage postmodern culture, and challenges them to live in ways that are both authentic to the Christian faith and winsome in its expression. Margie is the editor of a quarterly newsletter, Notes From Toad Hall, where she writes about being faithful in the ordinary and the everyday. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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.

Four years ago, I met Jesse and Leah Roberts, the singer/songwriters of the two-person band, Poor Bishop Hooper, outside of their home in Kansas City. Their living room was full of books, toys, and instruments. Devoted parents of three, Jesse and Leah write and tour their gospel-centered pieces in settings that range from prisons to large, ornate concert halls. When we met, they had just begun planning their next and most ambitious project, EveryPsalm. Each Wednesday for three years, they released a song based on each of the 150 Old Testament poems. I was thrilled when they invited me to create the album artwork for the project. We started having conversations about the album art in July of 2019. I was a Sophomore at the Kansas City Art Institute studying traditional printmaking. I had just learned the copper etching process and in my enchantment of the strange and complex medium, wanted to etch all the psalms illustrations into metal plates. I created the plates using an etching process that originated in the 16th century. Rembrandt was a master in this art form, and the equipment I used would not have strayed far from the materials in his own studio. In the process of making the plates, the designs are first hand-drawn into a copper sheet covered in tar and etched in an acid bath. The plate, now carrying the line work on its surface, transfers the design onto paper when rolled through a printing press. The album artwork visuals are photographs of the copper plates themselves, and the prints are pulled from their prepped and inked faces when they are rolled under high pressure through the press. I started drawing thumbnail sketches and taking notes on recurring imagery as I read the Book of Psalms category by category. Bible scholars often group the 150 poems into seven general categories: psalms of lament, confidence, remembrance, wisdom, thanksgiving, praise, and kingship. As I thematically depicted each, I wanted to create visuals true to the scriptural language as well as the emotional portrayals of the psalmist. The Psalms of Wisdom The drawing for the Psalms of wisdom was the first of the seven plates that I completed. It references Psalm 1:3, “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” A man is seen reading scripture underneath a fruit tree beside running water, his foot crushing a serpent below. (Ps. 91) The Psalms of Lament The lament Psalms are prayers of pain, confusion, and anger. Looking at Psalms 3, 13, 22, 77, and 51, I wanted to convey grief and guilt. The adorned king is rendered bent and stiff. He is suspended with references to specific prayers behind him. David’s head hangs low and his stressed fingers appear as if they are holding a weight close to his chest. The Psalms of Praise In contrast, the praise illustration is energetic and celebratory. Psalms 29,47, 96 and 98 encourage dance and joyful singing. “Sing a new song of praise to him; play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy.” Through the inclusion of man and animal, I was creating a scene of all of creation praising God. The Psalms of Kingship The kingship etching is my personal favorite. A king kneels beside an altar with his arms stretched high. His crown is set on the ground in preparation for worship. On the altar, a sacrifice burns and smoke rises to frame a landscape of three hills richly decked with resources. This is to represent a blessed kingdom that prospers through the Lord’s oversight. The Psalms of Confidence When drawing the etching for the Psalms of confidence, I wanted to portray the calm voice of Psalm 23.  “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.”(23:2-3)  In it, a shepherd with a gentle expression leads and watches his flock walking beside him. The Psalms of Thanksgiving The design for the Psalms of thanksgiving shows the aftermath of battle. The background reveals fallen soldiers, horses, and scattered weapons. A kneeling king, with his helmet at his side, raises his hands in a posture of prayerful gratitude. His army waits patiently from a distance as he thanks the Lord for a battle won. The Psalms of Remembrance Similar to the lament plate, I wanted the design for the Psalms of remembrance to be a scene reminiscing on past events. A lone Israelite woman in the wilderness kneels with her arm extended. A quail stoops down to land in her open hand. Water pours from a split rock and circles around her. In the center, the parting of the Red Sea is shown with a crowd of refugees moving through it. Three of the ten plagues are shown above the parted waters; a cluster of locusts move with the tall grass around the sea, now red with blood. And a swarm of airborne flies move towards land from above. I had never read the psalms thematically before working on this project with Poor Bishop Hooper. I remember being taken by the various authors’ expressions of artistic loyalty throughout the poems. “If I forget you O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget how to play the harp. May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I fail to remember you, if I don't make Jerusalem my greatest joy.” (137:5-6). Seeing artmaking as obedience to the ancient text was a lovely concept to contemplate as I was an art student myself, finding my own visual language of worship. Poor Bishop Hooper’s Everypsalm project is on all major music streaming platforms as well as on Everypsalm.com. Lauren Stevens was raised alongside car engineers and Bible scholars in the desert terrain of Chandler, Arizona. A young love of pen and ink drawing easily translated to the linear nature of copper etching when she studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. There, she earned her BFA with a specialized emphasis in printmaking. Now, she is furthering her research as the Fall 2023 printmaking candidate at Arizona State University. Her work can be found on my website, Laurenstevensart.com and a closer view of her process is shared weekly on her instagram account, Laurenstevens_prints. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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.

This essay is in collaboration with Ekstasis, an imaginative project by Christianity Today that seeks to revive the imagination and build a digital cathedral to lift our eyes to Christ in wonder. Let us lament together, for a moment, over the trials of being artists who must have day jobs. Life is hard, down with capitalism, right? Our dreams enchant us with visions of what the creative life, fully lived, might be like: prolific and spontaneous creation; inspiration close at hand; space and time that echoes as it waits to be filled with your work of vast importance; a loyal audience waiting eagerly for you to toss them a scrap of your latest podcast, essay, or painting. Or, if you’re anything like me, your daydreams take you to a desk office in a windswept loft, the shelves lined with books you wrote, the stairs echoing with the footsteps of a loving partner bringing you a flavored latte (the last bit is probably just me). The truths of our lives, however, are often different and so much more real. The 6:00 a.m. alarm inviting you to the gray office of your thankless job. The eighteenth spit-up of the day staining the clothes you just changed into. The doom scroll growing doomier, the baby crying louder, the ominous tone of the Microsoft Teams ping. Artists have always struggled with balancing the call to create with the need to put food on the table. Philip Glass worked as a cabbie and a plumber to support his composing. Ai Weiwei was a carpenter, house painter, and professional blackjack player before his career as a contemporary artist took off. T.S. Eliot was a banker who took poetry very seriously on the side. Dorothea Lange worked in a photo studio for 15 years before she took the plunge into creating her own photographs. For those of us not there yet—for those of who may never be there, and for those of us who may not want to go even there, but still want to create and be inspired—what does it look like to embrace the call to the arts, here and now? I think I got a small glimpse of it three weeks ago. If you’ve been to an exceptionally memorable concert, worship service, or live show, you know the feeling of a communal experience where the air itself seems to turn from mere molecules into something laden with sacramental meaning. Inkwell, a recent foray from Ekstasis into the world of in-person events, aimed to be an oasis of contemplation and connection for those who are asking those questions of vocation, craft, and friendship. Kicking off in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood on a clear night in mid-January, the first Inkwell evening was meant to be a celebration of beauty and a call to “higher thinking and deeper feeling” in community with friends and contributors of the magazine, who came from across the UK and beyond. The space featured a small photography gallery at the front of the hall, opening onto a stage where poets, musicians, and essayists shared their work throughout the night. Amidst a pause here and there for snacks and mingling, Inkwell’s lineup of readers traced similar themes: what seemed to be a delightfully Franciscan highlighting of the presence of God in the everyday, whether in the natural world, in the faces of our friends, or in the moments of suffering that puncture everyday life. It was also special to see both emerging and established creators celebrated alongside one another, and to see how the collective body of work created a surprisingly cohesive and utterly moving whole, from the music of Nathan Edgell to the poetry of Elle Redman-Williams to essays from Elizabeth Oldfield and Joy Marie Clarkson. There was a poetic density in the air—not only was something special happening at Inkwell, but everyone there could feel it and knew it, too—long after tickets sold out, people kept streaming in. The room resounded with murmured responses or “amens” to hard-hitting lines of poetry or turns of phrase from an essay. Some, myself included, openly cried. Inkwell was the sweetest reminder to continue putting a hand to the plough both in the work that earns me a living and in the work that truly gives me life. It also reminded me that, just like the Christian life, the creative life is not meant to be lived alone. To be in a room filled with others who long for beautiful Christian engagement with culture is the kind of soul food that will inspire me for months to come. The friendships and connections found in a single evening reminded me that to uplift the creative work of others, and to step into the vulnerability of sharing your own, is to put into action the C.S. Lewis definition of friendship that I probably hear too often: “What, you too? I thought I was the only one.” Inkwell created a space to see other creatives not as competition, but as co-labourers in the work of finding and bringing forth beauty in the world, like drawing gold from the soil of our lives. The body of Christ benefits from the richness of all its parts. When I looked around the room, it occurred to me that Inkwell was a glimpse of the future I dream of—talking about creating and culture, rubbing shoulders with artists and writers, sharing my work and hearing others share theirs. When I told this to a friend, she said, “You’re already there!” She was right: I yearn for a future that is already present. As Joshua Luke Smith, one of the night’s poets, told us, “The life you long for is hidden in the life you have.” In a recent New Yorker article cheekily titled “Portrait of the Artist as an Office Drone”, Anna Wiener noted that oftentimes the most brilliant work of our lives comes out of the time that we spend not working on our art—that is, in the livings we make and the callings we tend to outside of our creative aspirations. Perhaps the lines are more blurred than we first assume, and the routines of our lives truly are the places where inspiration gestates. What if the mundane is fuel for the brilliant, and sparkles with its own kind of worth? What if the artist’s life is already nestled, like a matryoshka doll, inside of my life, and I need only the persistence and vision to unearth it? All around us is the beauty hidden in the everyday, like the leaven of God’s kingdom that permeates the whole. As Leonard Cohen famously said, we all have cracks in us—that’s how the light gets in. I may not have the full-time privilege of an artist’s career, but I have nooks and crannies of time: cracks where the light of inspiration gleams through, calling me to sit and take it in for a while, whether for a long rest or for the length of a single breath. And I may not have a cadre of artsy friends around me 24/7, but I have the privilege of Instagram DMs and fast trains if I’m only willing to reach out to those who inspire me. After sharing her essay about the kindness of God in the pursuit of our dreams, Kayla Norris ended the night by asking us, “Do you have a dream that’s stayed a dream for far too long?” In the silence of a room filled to bursting with artists, one could almost hear the sound of a hundred dearly-held dreams conjuring themselves to life in our minds. “My question to you,” Kayla asked, “is how much do you want it?” I’m writing this piece on my lunch break; at the end of this hour, I’ll return to the desk at my job and spend three hours uploading data into a spreadsheet. On getting home there will be groceries, bills, and meal prep. But when I crack open my laptop for one or two or five minutes, I will fill in the blank spaces of my works-in-progress with a word or two. Inspiration is here, in between the couch cushions and folded into the piles of laundry: not a luxury reserved for those who have “made it”, but a presence that saturates both the trenches and joys of what we’re called to. Inkwell reminded me to take up the pen with the knowledge that stewarding the call to create is all it takes to find the kind of life I dream of—and that when I look to the left and right, I’m surrounded by faithful makers who are doing the work in, around, and through the fabric of the everyday. Julia Bartel is a recent graduate of the University of St Andrews' Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts. Hailing from Canada, she now lives and writes in Scotland, where she is working on a novel manuscript. She is a huge fan of any movie starring Oscar Isaac and is probably knitting something right now. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us 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. Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

[Editor's Note: This post resumes Mark Meynell's 5&1 series on classical music which ran in 2020-2021. In this series we share five shorter classical pieces followed by one more substantial piece—all inside a given theme. With over 600 years of music to draw from, the hope is that you find a few old favorites combined with one or two new discoveries in each post.] Just weeks after the Second World War broke out in 1939, the renowned pianist Dame Myra Hess organized lunchtime concerts in the empty halls of London’s National Gallery. All the art had been whisked away for safekeeping deep in caves in the Welsh mountains. So instead of visual beauty, Londoners had the chance to savor its aural equivalent. The concerts continued five days a week, for six years throughout the war, even during the horror of the Blitz. There were nearly 2000 concerts. They kept people going. Music does that. It has the power to connect with people in their darkest moments. It provides escape, certainly: a few minutes to be transported or replace fear and despair with lighter emotions. At the same time, it can achieve the precise opposite, somehow articulating that very fear or despair in such a way that gives comfort. It communicates that we are not alone to feel what we do. And then it can lift our spirits to higher realities far beyond the challenges we face. We are reminded that the darkness engulfing us need not have the last word, that there are reasons for hope in the sublime and beautiful. Composers have sought to achieve all three, and sometimes they manage to do that simultaneously. But that is the miracle of music: contradictory emotions and thoughts can be expressed together. This list offers what a handful of composers have done while living through the crises of their own times. See how the Cawood dragon looks / Have mercy on us, O Lord (Ps 67) William Lawes (1602-1645, English) / The Ebor Singers, Paul Gameson (cond.) Crisis: The English Civil War The English Civil War was one of the first wars in history fought on the basis of ideology rather than ethnic or national allegiance. The result was that brothers and fathers might find themselves on opposite sides. It was brutal. Some would argue that the repercussions of this horrific period (which led to England becoming a republic for two decades) still shape British politics. William Lawes was a composer working during the reign of Charles I. When war broke out, he joined the king’s forces and was in York (a royalist stronghold) during its siege by Parliamentary forces in Spring 1644. He was killed the following year in a battle near the city of Chester. These two works respond to the crisis in different ways. The first was actually written during the siege itself. Cawood Castle was about 10 miles from York and Oliver Cromwell’s forces had captured it, and the song is a round in which two or more groups sing a melody just a few beats apart, but it is composed in such a way as to harmonize despite the time lag. The drums in this performance evoke the threat of the ‘Cawood dragon on the Lord of York. This is a rallying cry of defiance at a time of existential threat. Dragons might evoke fantasy and fairy tales, but the danger for the citizens was all too real. "See how Cawood’s dragon looks! Which frights from far the parliament rooks Which, like to fatal ravens cry Pork! Pork! Pork! To prey upon my Lord of York! But we have guns against their plot And they that cry Cawood! Cawood! Cawood! Fear you not." As might be expected of a church musician, Lawes also sets a biblical prayer for protection (in this case a metrical version of Psalm 67). A soloist leads the congregation in an affecting and yearning cry for mercy. After all, you only beg for mercy when you have absolutely no alternative. It is not hard to see why this ancient prayer might have deep resonance to a city under siege. Tosca, Act II: "Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore" (1900) Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924, Italian) / Leontyne Price (soprano, Tosca), Giuseppe Taddei (bass, Scarpia), Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan (cond.) Crisis: Italy in 1800 (Napoleon invades) and 1900 (political chaos) Italian politics has probably always been very complicated and I certainly do not pretend to understand the half of it. The country we now know of as Italy is a relatively modern phenomenon, forged out of many city-states that had fiercely guarded their independence for centuries.  Perhaps as a direct result, it has often experienced real turmoil, both from internal and external pressures. Puccini is regarded as one of Italy’s national treasures, the composer of expansive, lyrical, and highly melodramatic operas. He wrote Tosca, one of his most famous, during a period of renewed turmoil. It is set in Rome on just two days in June 1800 with Napoleon’s domination of Europe in the background. France has already invaded once and will again, but its troops temporarily withdraw from Rome, leaving behind a chaotic situation. Baron Scarpia is the chief of police and an all-round rotter. Tosca is the heroine whose lover, Cavaradossi, is an artist and friend of Angelotti, the former consul. Scarpia is desperate to find Angelotti so he arrests and tortures Cavarodossi for information. Tosca is desperate and sings one of Puccini’s most famous arias, an angry and despairing prayer, accusing God of abandoning her. But despite its theme, it is one of the most glorious pieces ever written for the female voice. This is a translation of the Italian text: "I lived for art, I lived for love, I never harmed a living soul! With a discreet hand I relieved all misfortunes I encountered. Always with sincere faith my prayer rose to the holy tabernacles. Always with sincere faith I decorated the altars with flowers. In this hour of grief, why, why, Lord, why do you reward me thus? I donated jewels to the Madonna's mantle, and offered songs to the stars and to heaven, which thus did shine with more beauty. In this hour of grief, why, why, Lord, ah, why do you reward me thus?" Seven Songs of Latter Days: No. 4. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (1901) Gustav Mahler (1860-1911, Austrian) / VOCES8, Mary Bevan (soprano), Nick Deutsch (oboe), Barnaby Smith (cond.) Crisis: Personal Heartache A crisis is, of course, no less real when experienced by an individual rather than a population. Gustav Mahler was a man who faced acute heartache during his life, because of the pain of antisemitism, agonies within his marriage, and the loss of a child. He is able to articulate in music what so many feel but have no means of expression. We now hear the human voice in a very different world, accompanied in this arrangement by the haunting voice of the oboe. Mahler composed music for a number of poems by the German poet Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866). This one is particularly affecting, expressing a profound world-weariness and despair at life. "I am lost to the world With which I used to waste much time; It has for so long known nothing of me, It may well believe that I am dead. Nor am I at all concerned If it should think that I am dead. Nor can I deny it, For truly I am dead to the world. I am dead to the world’s tumult And rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my heaven, In my love, in my song!" Translation © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) Praeludium & Allegro (1905); Berceuse Romantique (Op. 9, 1916) Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962, Austrian/American) / Joshua Bell (violin), Paul Coker (piano) Crisis: The First World War A catastrophe as seismic and terrible as the First World War is too vast to evoke through any one medium. So many of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, musicians, and writers were profoundly shaped by its horrors and they responded to it in a myriad ways. Fritz Kreisler was a virtuoso violinist (regarded as one of the greatest of all time) who composed and arranged many works for his instrument. He was Jewish but in imperial Austria, it made sense for him to be baptised as a Christian at 12. Of course, this would never protect him Nazi race laws and he managed to escape to the US. He wrote his beloved Praeludium and Allegro before the First World War. It is a majestic statement of confidence and hope (he often had fun claiming that he was unearthing works by lesser-known composers - in this case, one called Pugnani!). The piano works through a sequence of chords that are reminiscent of the Baroque period, especially the work of Bach, while the violin weaves around them with a little bit of swagger. Then it leads to a joyous allegro. But just a few years later, he composes Berceuse Romantique in the middle of the war. It is more wistful and lyrical, perhaps dreaming of a world now lost in happier times. The natural response to agony is to long for better times. It is an escape and as such can bring great, if temporary, comfort. Sleep (arr. Gerald Finzi) from Five Elizabethan Songs Ivor Gurney (1890-1937, English) / Dame Sarah Connolly, Tenebrae, Aurora Orchestra, Nigel Short (cond.) Ivor Gurney was a brilliant man, a poet of great profundity and a gifted composer who was taught and mentored by Ralph Vaughan Williams (he regarded himself as composer first and foremost). But he battled with bipolar disorder for much of his life at a time when such afflictions were barely understood, let alone treated sympathetically. He suffered a breakdown in 1913 but he recovered sufficiently to return to the Royal College of Music in London. However, he joined the army in 1915 and was sent to fight in the trenches in Flanders. He wrote poetry during this time but ended up being gassed in 1917 and was invalided home. His recovery was slow and incomplete. Tragically, he would spend the last 15 years of his life in mental institutions. This piece is a gorgeous setting of a poem by John Fletcher (1579-1625), a cry for relief from the pain. "COME, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving Lock me in delight awhile; Let some pleasing dreams beguile All my fancies; that from thence I may feel an influence All my powers of care bereaving! Though but a shadow, but a sliding, Let me know some little joy! We that suffer long annoy Are contented with a thought Through an idle fancy wrought: O let my joys have some abiding!" Mass in a time of War (No. 10 in C ma, Hob. XXII:9, 1796) Josef Haydn (1732-18o9, Austrian) / Joanne Lunn (sop.), Sara Mingardo (contralto), Topi Lehtipuu (tenor), Brindley Sherratt (bass), Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists & John Eliot Gardiner (cond.) Crisis: Austria after the French Revolution It wasn’t only Italy that was affected by the fallout from the French Revolution (1789). The whole of Europe was convulsed by turmoil, a reality that Napoleon was easily able to exploit. The Austrian empire hastily mobilized troops and found itself fighting the French in Italy and Germany. Things were not going well and there was a real threat that Vienna might also fall to the French conqueror. And in fact, this is what precisely happened when Napoleon captured Vienna in 1809. Joseph Haydn was a devout Catholic and one of the most highly regarded musicians of the era, greatly respected by the likes of Mozart and Beethoven. He was also a gregarious person with a real sense of fun and humor. He wrote several settings of the Catholic Mass, and this is one of the most popular. It follows the standard liturgical pattern, with 11 sections. As such, there are no explicit references to the invasion threat. However, it was an expression of turning to God in the crisis and leaning on his mercy during a service focused on the sacrifice of Christ. Still, there are musical hints of the context towards the end of the Mass. Listen out for this in the Benedictus and Agnus Dei sections, where there is a sense of foreboding in nervous voices and ominous drums (the mass in fact has a nickname: Paukenmesse, literally the ‘Timpani Mass’). The final appeal for peace (dona nobis pacem) has obvious relevance too, but the music sounds an optimistic note, full of joy and expectancy. Listen to the rest of the mass on YouTube. Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Gloria: Gloria... Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Gloria: Qui... Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Gloria: Quoniam... Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Credo: Credo in... Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Credo: Et... Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Credo: Et... Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Sanctus Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Benedictus Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Agnus Dei Haydn: Mass in C Major - Missa in tempore belli ("Paukenmesse") , Hob. XXII:9 - Dona Nobis Mark Meynell is 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 the Hutchmoot Arts conference 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.

"For years, early morning was a time I dreaded. In the process of waking up, my mind would run with panic. All the worries of the previous day would still be with me, spinning around with old regrets as well as fears for the future." -Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk Some greet the morning with mirth songs and bird chirps, but I resonate more with Kathleen Norris’ dreaded description. Sometimes I greet the morning like a troubled atheist, lost in a god-empty story that cannot handle what frightens me. In the words of Phillip Larkin’s haunting poem, “Aubade,” I wake up staring into “soundless dark . . . unresting death,” experiencing “a special way of being afraid” amid “all the uncaring intricate rented world.” On such mornings, I need the name of Jesus spoken and his true story told to me afresh. I grab a pencil from the lampstand and scribble grace-words on a page. 'The spell of night-tales broken, at the name of Jesus spoken, and I am myself again." It is only 5:56 am. But I’ve already fought a battle for first love. My first love is with me and for me. He helps me awake. He takes my hand and says, “Follow me.” The gospels reveal how Jesus inhabits the morning. He prays (Mk. 1:35). He eats  and He walks (Matt. 21:18). He teaches (Jn. 8:2). To follow Jesus into the morning is to revisit the memory of Eden. We learn to get on with the small tasks of being human in God’s world. Talking to God. Eating food. Walking with friends. Doing the work given to us. Sometimes we dislike the sunrise. It seems like a “busy old fool” interrupting a cherished night. Or it appears more like a messenger of unwanted things that wait for us within the day. And yet, for King David, sunrise is like a bridegroom love-struck and happy, running to his bride (Ps. 19:5). The sun, as David the psalmist sees it, is no melancholy like me, tired of shining again unnoticed, frustrated by traveling the same old path every day, bored with routine. No! The sun—and all creation with it—is like that runner in “Chariots of Fire” who when he ran, lifted his head, and tasted the pleasures of God. The sun shines love-stubborn above the thunderclouds. No stormy sky can quench it! The sun still rises when it’s a time to weep just as it does when it’s a time for laughter. The sun rises whether this particular morning is a time of birth or death. Whether we are losing or finding, tearing down or building up, the dawn still wakes us. What if the sun rising every morning is a good harbinger of God? A liturgy for our remembering? In the morning, night tears end and Joy comes (Ps. 30:5). In the morning, God outlasts the darkness. We’ve a song to sing (Ps. 59:16). In the morning, God is with us. Our help has come (Ps. 46:5). In the morning, God is one step closer to overcoming all that is wretched (Ps. 101:8). In the morning, God’s love remains. His love won’t quit (Ps. 143:8). In the morning, We are heard (Ps. 5:3). So many mornings Jesus experienced the intimacy of His Father, withdrawing to desolate places and seeking him with prayer (Lk. 5:16; 6:12-13). It was also the morning when Jesus’ enemies bound his hands with murderous intent. (M. 15:1) That evil morning, did Jesus see himself pictured in the bridegroom sun? Could the bright star the son of God called into existence somehow have nodded to its maker as wicked men bound our Lord’s hands and feet and sought to take his breath away? There’d been many mornings before those men who killed him were born. And there would come a morning on the third day after they succeeded. Death would die, and like the sun, Jesus would rise. The morning proclaims that resurrection and life outlast the night. Grace greets us in the morning. We rise. God’s love is here! We pray. God’s guidance is with us! We hope again and cry out anew. God is overcoming the darkness! We eat the daily bread we have. God has provided! We get to the work before us. God has something to show us! The dawn has come. The tomb is empty! No wonder, as Kathleen Norris grew in familiarity with the Psalms, she changed her mind about the mornings. Later in life, she no longer spoke of them with the dread she penned in our opening quote. Hope resides here for any of us still gloomed by the dawn. This is God’s world. The morning is his idea and gift, a poem of enduring hope, a parable of darkness overcome, a sermon looking forward to the promised morning that once it dawns, will never end. I often turn to Saint Patrick’s prayer for the morning. I invite you to join me. "I arise today,Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity . . .the Creator of creation . . . I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me, God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's shield to protect me, God's host to save me. Zack Eswine (Rev. Ph.D.), serves as lead pastor of Riverside Church in Webster Groves, Missouri. Zack's books include Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes and The Imperfect Pastor and he writes poems and stories at The Good Dark. Zack and his wife Jessica co-founded Sage Christianity (sagechristianity.com) to create hospitable spaces for bringing honest questions into conversation with the wisdom of Jesus. 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. Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

If I had to pick a face for Gen Z, it would be Billie Eilish. I might be an elder millennial bemoaning the loss of skinny jeans and indie folk, but I like Eilish. I didn't always like her. The first time I heard her song "Bad Guy" I thought it was creepy and weird and didn't understand why she was so popular. But five years later, I drive around listening to "What Was I Made For?" on repeat. At 20 years old, Billie Eilish has chewed up milestones many other artists work for their whole careers. She's won nine Grammys (the youngest person to win all four categories), was the youngest woman to reach No. 1 in the UK, won two Golden Globes, headlined Coachella music festival, and won an Oscar for her Bond theme song—the list goes on. Her 2019 lyrical boast, "You should see me in a crown/I'm gonna run this nothing town" (alongside the sound of knife-sharpening) was no hyperbole. Eilish had an innocuous start, homeschooled by actor and musician parents in Los Angeles. She recorded music with her older brother Finneas in his bedroom, including her entire first album. Eilish's family remains core, Finneas still writing and producing alongside her and her parents accompanying her on tour. Eilish's breakthrough hit at age 14, "Ocean Eyes", originally intended for her dance teacher's use, became an overnight sensation. It showcases her dreamy, melancholic vocals, whispery and restrained. But this is only one side of Eilish. Eilish's debut album When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? sets nightmarish, sometimes violent imagery to electropop and heavy bass. Its music videos feature Eilish's back being stabbed with syringes, cigarettes being stubbed out on her face, and her drinking a glass of black liquid then crying black tears that fill up a room. She sings from the perspective of someone about to jump off a building and a monster under her bed. Her music never shies away from the dark and messy; she's openly shared her own struggles with depression. Some have argued her lyrics glorify depression and even suicide, while others find her honesty refreshing. Eilish is versatile, never allowing any one trend to define her. Her sound is eclectic and constantly evolving, just like the internet Gen Z grew up with. She samples a clip from The Office, her dentist's drill, even her taking out her Invisalign braces. Anything has potential. Among her influences are The Beatles, Green Day, Lana Del Rey, Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, Tyler, the Creator, and Frank Sinatra. Hip-hop is her favorite genre, but you name it, Eilish is probably into it. Eilish provides a counterpoint to the hyper-produced, shiny, technicolored worlds of Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, the millennial pop stars. She's something like Avril Lavigne was in my youth: the anti-Britney Spears, dressed in baggy skater clothes. Her songs and videos are both gritty and funny and feel like the product of Eilish’s imagination rather than a slick package birthed from a corporation. She seems to fight hard to retain creative license and comments in interviews that she's afraid of being controlled. It's a rational fear, especially for someone so young; Justin Bieber has said he wants to protect Eilish from what the music industry did to him. Eilish has often addressed the cost of fame. In "Everything I Wanted" she sings, "I had a dream I got everything I wanted/Not what you'd think/And if I'm being honest/It might have been a nightmare". She says it always breaks her heart to sing, "Everybody wants something from me now/And I don't wanna let 'em down." Eilish's songs frequently examine power dynamics, particularly regarding sexuality. The #MeToo movement has shone attention on the predatory, abusive behavior of far too many men. The body positivity movement has attempted to help women embrace their bodies whether or not they look like Barbie. Yet women are still constantly asked to market their bodies and told that having "sex like a man" is the way to find power. Eilish openly wrestles with these tensions, saying in a spoken word piece, "If I wear what is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I'm a slut." Her distinctive fashion choices—often including blue or green hair, baggy clothes, and chains—have constantly been dissected, her body ogled and critiqued. Her shifting fashion choices reflect an attempt to self-define in a world that gives conflicting messages about sexuality and female worth. On Eilish's soft, haunting track, "Your Power", she calls out an older man for his sexual exploitation of a young girl. "Power isn't pain," she sings. Eilish has revealed she was sexually abused as a minor. But how to protect yourself? Though Billie isn’t hypersexualized like many young pop stars, there are still overtly sexual elements to her music that cast her as someone men should fear. For example, in "Bad Guy" she sings, "My mommy likes to sing along with me/But she won't sing this song/If she reads all the lyrics/She'll pity the men I know". In a world where young women are often extremely vulnerable, this reversal can feel appealing. To avoid being exploited, you need to be tough as Eilish's long, black nails. Who doesn't want to be a "bad guy" if the alternative is being abused? Granted, much of Eilish's bad guy persona is just performance, and it can be fun. But I hope Eilish and other young women can find relationships that are mutually respectful and caring rather than a struggle for power. Many of Eilish's songs also reveal a desire for love and connection in an untrustworthy world. This tough-but-tender tension is, I think, is one of the reasons for Eilish's remarkable success. She comes across as so unpretentious and likeable in her interviews. When she received a Grammy from Ringo Starr, she greeted him, "Hi Ringo, what's up?" then used most of her airtime to praise a contender. She hugs her mom and tells her "I love you" at the end of each annual Vanity Fair interview. "Everything I Wanted" is about the love between her and her brother. Her songs are at one moment feisty and self-assured and at the next full of melancholic longing for meaning and relationship. Eilish's latest album, Happier Than Ever, is consumed with a search for identity: "I'm in love/But not with anybody else/Just wanna get to know myself." Eilish's vulnerability is perhaps nowhere so striking as in her Grammy-winning song for the Barbie movie, "What Was I Made For?" How did the girl known for being the bad guy end up singing Barbie's "heart song"? In many ways, Eilish has styled herself as the anti-Barbie. Her EP is titled Don't Smile at Me, whereas Barbie is known for being nothing but smiles. But Barbie's film story is about becoming human and real. Barbie tackles many of the same themes Eilish does in her music, addressing power, gender, and sexuality. Eilish's demographic of liberal Gen Z girls has skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression. Eilish encapsulates this in songs dealing with substance abuse, teen suicide, and climate change anxiety. (In “All the Good Girls Go to Hell”, God and Satan watch together as people destroy the earth.) Gen Z is the most self-marketed generation of all time. Like Barbie, Gen Zers how to make themselves into products for consumption. They know what sells. But do they know who they are? "I was an ideal/Looked so alive/Turns out I'm not real/Just something you paid for"—I wonder how many young influencers see themselves in that mirror. Eilish has said that at one point she felt like a parody of herself. It wasn't until after she and her brother had written "What Was I Made For?" that she realized, "This is me. This is my life, and how I feel." Youth culture’s obsession with Billie Eilish seems to represent a longing for authenticity, for stars who are real and who can speak deeply to human experience, not just to the lifestyle of the rich and famous. I appreciate Eilish’s honesty both in her interviews and music, an honesty too often absent from Christian art. Eilish is thoughtful and creative and addresses important cultural issues with amazing awareness for someone so young. I applaud her probing, existential themes, but I wonder hope looks like in her world. She seems to be wondering, too. "What was I made for?" It's a question at the core of what it means to be human, at any age. It's a timeless question, and Eilish sings it with all the quavering, searching restraint it deserves. Eilish is seeking the answer to this question through her music, and her fans are seeking along with her. Was I made to be exploited or to be powerful? Was I made to love myself or someone else? Was I made to be happy or depressed? Was I made to save the world or watch it burn? Gen Z is asking big questions. What answers are we going to give? Liz Snell lives on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. She studied writing at the University of Victoria and is now studying psychology. She works with adults with disabilities and in her spare time gardens, hikes, knits, and makes awful puns. 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.

Track two on the album was an enigma to me. I didn’t understand some of its lines and never had the time to unpack them, so whenever “Every Star Is a Burning Flame” came around as I played Andrew Peterson’s The Burning Edge of Dawn, I skipped over it—at least mentally. But in April of 2017, the song began playing again, and this time I didn’t want to tune it out because I was hearing it live. I was in a dim, spacious sanctuary of a room, attending the final event of a conference hosted by the Anselm Society: an evening concert with Andrew Peterson. As an organization whose mission is “a renaissance of the Christian imagination,” the Anselm Society had been gathering people for lectures, concerts, and discussions about faith and art for a few years by that point, and it had also established a small guild so that local artists could engage with each other. Because I’d begun serving as assistant director for the guild, I knew a few faces at the conference, but it had still been an overwhelming day. I was glad to simply rest and listen. To learn more about the Anselm Society, visit anselmsociety.org. Sitting at the piano, Andrew prefaced “Every Star” with a story. One day, after stopping in downtown Louisville to have lunch with Buddy Greene, he came upon a historical marker. The sign stood at the site of Thomas Merton’s “Fourth and Walnut Epiphany,” which took place on March 18, 1958. In Merton’s own words in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, the experience that struck him at that spot changed his perspective of people forever: [I]n the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness . . .  And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. . . . Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. Of all the storied images from the concert that night, this picture of countless walking stars and suns lingered. *** I began to play “Every Star Is a Burning Flame” on the way to the monthly guild meetings. I thought the music and the words might calibrate my perspective in the right direction —and perhaps lend me a dram of courage—before I walked through the door of whatever location we had managed to borrow for that evening. For the little guild was growing, bringing in visual artists, musicians, and writers who spanned a wide spectrum of personalities and life experiences, and our three-member staff was beginning to figure out our focus. We wanted the guild to be a place where artists felt comfortable to share their work, their struggles, and their triumphs with each other. We knew we didn’t want the group to replace the role of the local church in the artists’ lives. How could we help each one grow? In what ways could we equip them with deepening roots in orthodox theology and provide room for them to become resonators while cheering on their efforts to express beauty and humanity and joy and pain? "We often ended up talking about what we were mourning and what we were making side by side, and somehow that mix of our mortality with our creativity made the grace and the brilliance of life gleam out like the noonday sun." When I joined the guild in 2015, I thought I was entering a cordial network of people who liked to be creative. I felt about two inches tall when I attended my first meeting—I had read the accomplishments and profiles of all these Real Artists on the website—but I also thought it wise to tread carefully; one could never be sure what eccentric geniuses might do, after all. I supposed Christian artists would have to be in sync on doctrines and issues in order to have genuine fellowship. Perhaps, in time, this group might be a safe place to solicit feedback (to be taken with a grain of salt, of course). Mainly I expected to nod politely and hoped to sharpen my writing skills by watching the example of others in my field. Two years in, as mentioned above, my questions regarding the guild had changed drastically. What I witnessed in the next seven years altered my view further still. As the guild grew, so did the range of our skills. At the start of almost every meeting, each person said his or her name and art form by way of introduction—and the latter did not always come easily. We learned to wrangle words like “writer” or “poet” or “painter” out of our mouths without disclaimers; we cheered on the day that one of the members finally introduced himself as “silversmith” without hesitating. One evening, seated around a table on the semi-private patio of a Mexican restaurant, we shared our answers to the question, “What would your magnum opus be?” Each one of the works described helped me understand what its artist was trying to do through the pieces he or she shared month after month. Our feedback for each other often revealed our breadth of viewpoints, whether we had five or twenty attendees at a given meeting. We were military spouses, lawyers, parents, recent graduates, grandparents, third culture kids, gardeners, video game enthusiasts, seasoned musicians, portraitists, cat lovers, polite dog allergy sufferers, exvangelicals, evangelicals, clay shapers, fiction world builders, nonfiction essayists. Our conversations wove together our backgrounds in addition to our specialties, and sometimes these intersections presented a challenge. After I moved from being assistant director to co-director, I worried about facilitating the meetings, wondering if we were spending more time commiserating about rejections and artist’s block rather than creating, or if we were drifting blithely into heresy in some side discussion. Some temperaments seemed to chafe at the presence of others; some ventured to join a meeting or two and did not return. But one evening, the husband of a member artist joined her to tell us that she had been diagnosed with stage four cancer. This was not the first hard situation we had shared within the group—early on, it became clear that we were all familiar with depression and anxiety and broken relationships—but this particular news seemed to reveal a special trust that had built up over time. That moment stands out as a turning point in my understanding of the guild. We continued to share and to listen to one another, but though I hardly know how to explain it, I began to catch snatches of what I can only describe as intimations of wholeness—flashes of what each person was like in the hidden center, of what he or she might be like someday in an unbroken, remade world. I saw it in the unwavering, earnest graciousness in one musician’s eyes as he asked for comments on his song, in the hard-won endurance on a visual artist’s face as she worked through past trauma one canvas at a time, in the stilled and listening openness of a writer whose pen went silent for a season as grief did its work. Even now, these remembrances bring me a sense of solemnity and beauty undimmed by time. Maybe these stood out more clearly because it was an arts-centered group, distinct from a church small group or a cluster of friends. Our purpose for gathering, combined with the updates we shared, meant that we often ended up talking about what we were mourning and what we were making side by side, and somehow that mix of our mortality with our creativity made the grace and the brilliance of life gleam out like the noonday sun. We lost three members to cancer in five years, but what I carry with me is the extraordinary kindness that rang in S.’s voice as she presented a few guild members with garden seed packets bearing their names. The sight of K.’s exquisite tea bag paintings and haiku, and the generosity with which she gave away her art supplies when she could no longer use them. The enthusiasm that still shone in H.’s eyes as he taught a mini-seminar on notable films, and the perfectly straight posture of attention he brought to every meeting. They continued to create as long as they could, in a way that seemed not so much their last burst of strength but the quiet confirmation of a purpose that came as naturally to them as breathing. That purpose bore fruit through all of us, even those who were not grappling immediately with death. Suffering cracked us all open at the seams; it made the work of the Redeemer visible between the ragged edges. My fellow director Christina and I kept our original questions in sight as we tried to encourage the artists, particularly through the long and isolating drought of the pandemic. I am one hundred percent sure we failed many. But for this writer, the main answer to the “why” behind creative community no longer lay in having a sounding board for drafts or forming professional relationships; it was simply the regularity of my exposure to these living, breathing makers. The “secret beauty” that Merton spoke of, which I had the privilege to glimpse, reminds me of what other theologians and writers have said about mankind bearing the image of God. His image is “too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being,” In his book, Herman Bavinck notes; “[i]t can only be somewhat unfolded in its depth and riches in a humanity counting billions of members.” Hence Merton’s “billions of points of light”; hence Andrew Peterson’s “million suns” rising. In The Remarkable Ordinary, Frederick Buechner candidly points out that we cannot sustain the kind of vision that sees these lights all the time: “because if you listen to everybody and you look at everybody—seeing every face . . . how could you make it down half a city block? You couldn’t. . . . But we can do more than we do—more than we do, surely we could do that.” “More than we do,” in attention, in perceptiveness, in grace: this is a good phrase, I believe, to pray on the way to a meeting. *** Tonight, we are gathering again. I “retired” from guild staff in 2022, but I still try to arrive a little early sometimes, and the atmosphere in the room is as generous and welcoming as ever. A modest but tantalizing spread of cheeses, meats, crackers and chocolate anchors our small talk as artists trickle in; throughout the room there are snippets of news and exclamations over workplace woes, children’s antics, and deadlines. A few writers revisit the idea of keeping a scoreboard of rejections, with a prize for the winner. One of the leaders invites us to sit down, merrily threatening to yodel to get our attention along the way, and soon we are all seated in a rough circle. “So, who’s brought something to share for this month’s prompt?” Christina asks. I glance around the room at these familiar faces, and I see how wildly these art-makers and subcreators have upended what I thought a guild of artists would look like nine years ago. They have expanded all my prior notions about what it means to display the gospel and glory of Christ. I know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that unsettling ghost stories have a place in the Kingdom. So do middle-grade novels about dinosaur riders—and earrings made from WWII planes—and Cubist paintings with philosophical symbolism—and mini memoirs—and Irish tunes played on the hammered dulcimer—and sgraffito pottery. Their individual ways of looking at the world have added new layers and dimensions to mine, so that the world itself is a richer and more wondrous place, teeming with the marks of an impossibly prolific and attentive Creator. In this way, the guild has changed my writing. Meeting with its people has helped me envision the people who might come across the pieces I write, so that these readers are no longer faceless consumers but humans with dappled stories of their own. Constructive suggestions from my guild peers have helped me to clarify both my written words and my faith—for while we don’t always agree on minor doctrinal matters or a given approach to a topic, their comments have often led me to examine what I believe, and the kind of posture I should take as I hold that belief. Their feedback has also taught me to examine my own. If I don’t understand the intention behind a work or the disposition of an artist well enough to respond without snuffing out the desire to create, I need to learn those things first. As a part of the Body of Christ, the best service I can render is to be someone who is for the artist long before I open my mouth. But most of all, the guild has wrought a permanent change: they have made it so that I can never view a person in front of me with contempt ever again. Every time I read C. S. Lewis’s admonition that “[i]t is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours,” I know it to be true from my time in this community. The smallest, quietest, most gregarious, or incomparably irascible people I may meet—these hold a potential for nobility that is worth watching for. In Susanna Clarke’s novel Piranesi, a character who has lived among splendid and mysterious mythical statues in a splendid and mysterious house comes into our world. He enters a quiet park just before twilight, and looks around: "People were walking up and down on the path. An old man passed me. He looked sad and tired. He had broken veins on his cheeks and a bristly white beard. As he screwed up his eyes against the falling snow, I realised I knew him. He is depicted on the northern wall of the forty-eighth western hall. He is shown as a king with a little model of a walled city in one hand while the other hand he raises in blessing. I wanted to seize hold of him and say to him: In another world you are a king, noble and good! I have seen it! But I hesitated a moment too long and he disappeared into the crowd." His words and their urgency move me whenever I think of them. “I have seen it!” Such is the company we keep, as we walk up and down the ordinary paths of our neighborhoods and social circles. A summer wind rushes sideways as I leave the meeting. The gray and violet striations in the sky and the brightening pools under the streetlamps create a quiet sanctuary in the parking lot, and I stop for a minute to look up. I cannot see the stars overhead at first, but slowly my eyes adjust enough to pick out one – two – three points of light. I was taught many years ago that to stand in the presence of God now would be to perish. I believe this; I know the discrepancy between who He is and who I am on this broken earth, and the hope that keeps me going is that I will someday be the person I have been created and ransomed to be, and see Him face to face. But tonight I can feel that my expression still holds some warmth from meeting with people who have for a time let themselves and the work of the Spirit within them be seen. Perhaps this is how the great mystery of transformation works, at least in part: we are all navigating our way toward a future fellowship by the reflections in each other’s faces as we follow the Light of the World. From small sparks burning in humble spaces, this collective luminescence tells us something about all the light we’ve missed noticing—and all the light we’ve yet to behold. Within this guild and its art, within its artists, winks a glory that foretells the radiance of the coming world: “noble and good,” mirthful and quirky and altogether unforgettable. I have seen it. If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. 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“‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.’ ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit, ‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’ ‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’ ‘It doesn’t happen all at once…you become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who has to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’ ‘I suppose you are Real?’ said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled. ‘The Boy’s Uncle made be Real,’ he said. ‘That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always. The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.” - The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams - The Velveteen Rabbit is one of those recurring books in my life, ever-forgotten and then reappearing again in my mind like an old stash of photographs or letters or casserole recipes. Every few years, something returns me to the Rabbit and the Skin Horse and the Boy. Most recently, Joel Ansett’s newest album, Layers, was the culprit. Always an artful storyteller in his songs, Ansett’s latest release combines his usual narrative with the sort of quieter, wondering perspective gained from life with his own young children. True to the title track, the album depicts “all the layers keeping us apart” when we hide ourselves away (and isn’t that mostly always?). “I wish it was easy to get to the heart,” Ansett sings, and we all know better than to expect that the cost of getting past these layers will be anything short of getting our hair loved off, eyes dropped out, joints loosened. From the imagined agony of the first ever sunset (“down on your knees, begging it not to go”) to the innocent lament that “it takes a long time to wait,” Ansett retells in images and stories the journey we’re all on in becoming Real. “What If We Fall” describes the hesitancy and cost of love, while “I’ll Be Here” tells of the offer to be a listening ear and burdened shoulder. “Night Sky” speaks to the dark night of the soul—now that the sun has set—and “If You Really Knew Me” tells the story much like that of the Skin Horse, searching for those who will understand enough to see past our shabbiness all over. We, the listeners, like the Rabbit from the story, wish we could become Real without these uncomfortable things happening to us. But of course, anyone who has made it to the end of The Velveteen Rabbit knows that becoming Real is always worth it in the end, or as Ansett writes, what is lost in the becoming  is “only lost for now.” “Tell us the end of the story Show us the glory ahead See how the loud and self-righteous have fallen and the broken are lifting their heads. There’s more life up ahead than we could imagine; Our sorrows will turn into laughter again. We’ll drink wine and break bread and boast in our weakness, talk of the ways we were raised from the dead.” Precious songs like “Pull,” “Plead,” and “Already” tell of the goodness of becoming Real—the life in relationship with God and man. And it’s no wonder that the final song describes not just one sunrise but “an endless day, and it’s already on its way," for once we are Real, we can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always. But, if you’re anything like me, skepticism wins out at least half the time. My own shabbiness is the thing I let matter most to me most often. I start wanting to break easily just so I can be neatly categorized as “carefully kept” and left alone. If today isn’t the sort of day when you feel much like believing in the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, Ansett has that base covered too. Like us, he’s “looking for something that stays true if I believe it or not. You say you’re making it brand new If I believe you or not.” Someday perhaps, I hope, The Velveteen Rabbit will make its promise known in your life again in some small way. If it’s through Joel Ansett’s album, I’ll be doubly grateful. Joel Ansett has just released Layers on vinyl - a beautiful gift for a very Real person in your life. His vinyl (along with lyrics and other merch) is available on www.joelansett.com, and Layers is available for streaming wherever you care to stream. Hannah Hubin is a writer, poet, and lyricist. Her projects include All the Wrecked Light: A Lyrical Exposition of Psalm 90 (www.allthewreckedlight.com) and the online visual poetry project Brown Brink Eastward. Hubin teaches humanities, writing, and Latin just south of Nashville and is currently pursuing graduate studies in Biblical languages. 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.

[Editor's Note: Théa Rosenburg has edited a new volume of the late Leslie Bustard's selected works. Pick it up at Square Halo.] "I feel like I just got it— I just got what it really meant to rest in Jesus. Rest in Jesus. He really is trustworthy . . ." In the weeks after Leslie Anne Bustard—my good friend, mentor, and collaborator—awoke on mercy’s shores, I opened a new document and pasted those words at the very top. Though they eventually became her book’s epigraph, at the time I didn’t know if they would stay or if those words were just there for me, to orient my thoughts as I read and reread her work, determining which pieces would become the pages of the book itself. And as I read, I revisited those words often. He really is trustworthy. Leslie only began to publish in earnest after she was diagnosed with two different forms of cancer, but her gift for hospitality immediately shone through in her writing. She invited readers into her journey the way she’d been inviting people into her home for years: she didn’t wait until things were perfect; she didn’t let fear of what readers might think keep her from sharing vulnerably about her life as a Christian, a mother, a wife. Instead, she shared the fears that rose up around her as she faced cancer, as well as the beauty she found even in the midst of suffering. Her path led to the shores and there, in the hospital, in her last weeks, she said, He really is trustworthy. Recently another friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer, and when she shared with me which books had already blessed her as she prepared for the uncertainty that accompanies all the tests and treatments, I realized that many of them were written by cancer survivors—writers who had faced and then written eloquently about their experience with cancer, with the wisdom and distance of one who has emerged from the other side. But that is not Leslie’s story. She wrote about her experience as it was happening, and then left an abundance of beautiful writings behind her—so many that it quickly became clear that only a fraction of them would fit into this book. She did not write as one reflecting back upon her experience or as one able to edit and revise those raw thoughts before publication. No, Leslie wrote from within the storm, when the path out was still obscure. And even there, she could call the Lord trustworthy. I write about her fight with cancer here because it is the reason you’re hearing from me as the book’s editor rather than from Leslie herself, but hear me say this: Tiny Thoughts That I’ve Been Thinking is not a book about cancer. It is a book about beauty and the Lord’s goodness, about art and hospitality and family life and marriage and poetry and grace and good food. Her essays on art and her poems invite us to look and look again and to praise the Lord for his beauty and goodness. Her personal essays and recipes invite us into the Bustard home, to savor and enjoy their traditions and to, perhaps, allow her stories to spark new traditions within our own homes. Her prayers reveal to us a heart that longed to please God even in the most wrenching circumstances. And the last half of the book—a selection of online journal entries written by both Leslie and her husband, Ned, throughout her cancer treatments—show us how to live our last days well, and how to walk our loved ones right up to those final shores. That is the true power of Leslie Bustard’s writings: through her words, she doesn’t just tell us how to live—she shows us. How to love our people well, how to enfold them, how to pause and praise God for a bare branch backlit by the winter sky, how to say—up to the very end and beyond—Rest in Jesus. He really is trustworthy . . . Tiny Thoughts That I’ve Been Thinking: The Selected Writings of Leslie Anne Bustard, from Square Halo Books, was released on February 27. To learn more about the book and about Leslie, please join us at the 2024 Square Halo Books conference, Return to Narnia—Creativity, Collaboration, and Community, on March 8–9, where—among a full schedule of excellent lectures and events—Théa Rosenburg will lead a panel discussion about Leslie’s life and work. Théa Rosenburg lives with her husband and four daughters in the Pacific Northwest where, when the wind blows from the right direction, she can smell the ocean from her front yard. She served as co-editor for the book Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children, and her work has appeared on Story Warren, Risen Motherhood, and in Every Moment Holy, Vol. III. You can find her at Little Book, Big Story, where she reviews children’s books, or at her Substack, The Setting, where she writes about everything else. If you’ve enjoyed this post 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. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of interviews between Ben Palpant and important contemporary poets. Interviews with Luci Shaw, Mischa Willet, Jeremiah Webster, and more are coming up on the Rabbit Room Poetry Newsletter. Subscribe to get them emailed directly to your inbox. Make me to awaken daily with a willingness to roll out readily, accompanied by grateful smirk, a giddy joy,the idiot's undying expectation,despite the evidence. —from "Idiot Psalm 2" by Scott Cairns Scott Cairns lives in a modest house, the house of his childhood, a house his father built. It is as unpretentious and welcoming as those who call it home. Standing together in the kitchen, gazing at the Puget Sound, I am struck by the spirit in this place, the same spirit that infuses his poetry—an open-handed generosity, a down-to-earth gentleness, a wry, disarming humor. He leads me downstairs, into a sunroom lined with windows, and gives me first dibs on where I want to sit. I select the old loveseat built out of bamboo. He’s drinking his coffee from a mug that says, “7 days without a pun makes one weak.” Glancing around the room, I notice the unremarkable furniture, the shelf lined with plants and I recall the child's box set of Beatrix Potter in the other room—it all strikes me as incredibly unassuming. The question that comes to mind could seem insulting, but I choose to ask it anyway. "You don't seem to take yourself too seriously." "Well, I guess going to a lot of poetry readings over the years, listening to other poets, I find myself thinking ‘you don't have to be that severe, dude.’" We laugh. "So, yes, I usually open my poems with a joke and then, at some point, you know, I get a little more serious, and the irony falls away. If you were raised in this home as I was, irony was a requirement. And puns were also required. How did Naomi Shihab Nye put it? 'Answer, if you hear the words under the words...' That is  very similar to what I have said endlessly to my students, which is, pay attention to the words within the words." "Maybe you could help me understand what you mean by that." "I've noticed that the poems I love most are poems that I can keep reading and opening because, during a given reading, I will have seen a primary sense of the word, but then see how the secondary, tertiary senses also figure into it. This is mostly why I started learning Greek and why I'm trying to learn a little Latin. It's because—as you must know— the English language is the best language for poetry. It's a museum for almost all the other languages. And so the etymological hauntings within an English word—of its Greek or Latin roots—may not be so overt, but they're present. If you're attentive to those ghosts, the poem keeps opening for you. It's never the same poem with each reading. I want to make poems like that, poems that keep opening." We should be cognizant that writing poems isn't about saying what you think you know; it's really about constructing a scene of meaning-making—a field into which  a reader can enter and make meaning with the poet. There really ought to be some ambiguity implicated in every line, I think." "Does the ambiguity play into line breaks for you?" I ask. "How do you make decisions on line endings?" "I am almost always counting something, that's one technical element of lineation. I also want my lines to register as a provisional, syntactical unit which is then modified by subsequent lines. Often, for instance, the word out here at the end of the line appears to be a noun, but then it turns out that it's an adjective modifying an actual noun waiting in the next line. That provides a wonderful, dizzying experience for the reader who then is obliged to take another look at what he just read, and his re-reading proves essential to the agency of what I like to call the poetic operation of language. "Poetry, when it's really poetry, occasions this sort of spinning, vertiginous—I like the word vertiginous—operation of language," he says, laughing. "You can also witness this in a rich prose text. Poetry, of course, can happen in verse or prose, even fiction, nonfiction, and drama can obtain some degree of this poetic operation of language—this delicious, puzzling, opening activity. A great novel like Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov—a book I read every summer—does this. It keeps opening me onto something new." He pauses and gazes out the window. "I really do feel that when I'm making a poem, it's not about my having a glimpse of something true and then trying to transcribe it. It's more like I'm trying to figure it out, glimpsing it as I go, wrestling with the language, listening to the music of the words, letting the music lead me to the next words. And in that way, my compositional practice is also my meditation. I guess for the first half of my life I resisted the equation between poetry and prayer. Over the past twenty years, however, I have approached my poems as a kind of prayer—perhaps my most efficacious prayer." "It sounds to me like your favorite poets force you to calibrate to mystery," I said, "but that's also partly why you write. You're calibrating to the divine mystery." "Well, yes, because I'm my first audience. I want to get something out of it, too." He laughs. "You should know that I really only have five ideas. I think they're pretty good ideas, but to the extent that ideation occurs in any of my poems, ever, they're pretty much the same five ideas retooled, if opening a little more onto a fuller glimpse each time I work it over. One of the hardest things for young readers to figure out is that there really is no hidden code in the poem. The reader’s purpose is not to crack the code and replace the poem with a paraphrase of the poem. No, a genuine poem is actually a place you enter and experience, a place in which you collaborate in meaning-making." "When I drove up to your house today, I thought of your house as just a house." "A very modest house." He laughs. "But when you told me that your dad built this house, I walked through this house differently. It seems as though poems, if we think of them as a place, should be entered with a different kind of respect. I'm not just entering an apartment that is produced en masse, I'm entering a place that has a great deal of meaning long before I entered it." "Ah, a dwelling place." "Yes. How do you enter a poem with that kind of respect?" "Well, I suppose, when I start reading, I'm not looking for any inspiration, anything to take. I'm just ingesting the page, you know. If it draws me back later, if I keep going back to the poem again and again, then something grows out of that thorough reading. It's the poets like Auden, Cavafy, that I come back to. Do you know Cavafy? He was a Greek poet living in Alexandria, Egypt in the early 20th century. He's a fantastic poet. I have certain favorites—Mark Strand, Anthony Hecht. Anyway, I spend a lot of time with them, you see. They become sort of my primary audience. They write to me, I write to them. Richard Howard was one of my beloved mentors, one of the best-read guys I’ve met. I pour over the works of these people and hope that some of it rubs off. I end up writing to satisfy them more than to satisfy, I don't know, the living." He laughs. "I want students to be less concerned with what the author is saying and more concerned with what they can literally make with the poem on the page. The entire literary history is really all about a conversation that has been going on for centuries. To be part of that conversation, first you have to read to find out what that conversation is, and let the utterances of other writers provoke your responses. The more you're equipped by the prior discourse, the more likely you are to make something interesting with it, something that might actually contribute to the ongoing conversation." "Let's talk about calibrating to mystery. During difficult times of life, do you find yourself writing more? Or less?" "It has probably varied over the years. As an escape from the turmoil, yes. Sometimes just saying to heck with it, I’m going to work on this poem is a great thing. Other times, things are going well and I still get the legal pad out and start reading again. Most of my writing time, you see, begins with reading time. I'll be pouring over some book and, eventually, I glimpse something new. My legal pad and number two pencils are out and ready, so I start responding to whatever glimpse I just had. I start looking for more openings onto new glimpses in this new work. So there's this linguistic dynamic at work that continues to give, to push me, to open me." "Do you leave unfinished poems out and about so they're always calling to you?" "You saw my desk." He laughs. "I think that would qualify as out and about. At some point, I'll move them to the laptop." "You strike me as a poet who isn't under some delusion that he's arrived," I said. "There's always something to pursue, to learn." "The older I get, the more I feel I have to achieve and the more I feel like I'm not going to make it, that  I'm going to run out of time." He laughs. "That’s pretty much  a guarantee." "Do you feel the weight that Keats felt when he had fears that he may cease to be...when he beheld cloudy symbols that he may never live to trace their shadows? Do you feel that?" "I have always been cognizant of death, but it's a little more present as I age, yes. But I think of Coleridge, he was always trying to mine something. I've always found his continual reaching to be compelling. I never want to give in to the notion that if something comes easy I should keep doing that thing." "How have you wrestled with public praise over the years?" I ask. "How have you kept it from warping your work?" "I guess I avoid it as much as possible. I've never been good at taking compliments. Maybe it's just part of my deflecting humor. One of the best ways to defend against its poor effect upon one’s character is to know some genuinely brilliant people. It keeps you humble. Of course, I also have friends who don't read poetry at all. I don't think it's for everyone. I think you need to have a taste for uncertainty, which is a taste I think most people don't share. Most people are profoundly burdened by practical matters. They may feel that they have no room for uncertainty, but that feeling keeps them from discovering, keeps them from a deep species of joy. Uncertainty is a great gift. I think uncertainty is a truer disposition than certainty. For instance, God is not reducible to anything we can say about God. God necessarily always exceeds what we might make of God; so, too, the truth necessarily always exceeds what we can narrowly define. If we think we can enclose the truth—or enclose God—we're not talking about truth and we're not talking about God." "What are some of the missteps you see young writers taking?" "The only time I really get distressed about my students is when marketing, self-promotion, starts taking up too much of their attention and time. I think self-promotion is a really bad idea for a couple of reasons—the greatest of which is that you start thinking that public attention is how you know your work is good. Applause and acclaim are not how you know something has quality. Witnessing all the self-promotion they're doing, I feel very sad. I start to wonder if maybe I forgot to say something to them when I had the chance, something important." "You're not suggesting that the market economy has no overlap with poetry." "No, marketing has a place, but the poet shouldn't be the one to do it. The poet should have some really great friends who love him and who will share her  work with other people who might enjoy it." "So you can focus on the work?" "Truly, yes, I just do the work. I'm not saying you shouldn't send your work out for publication, but I spend probably an hour a month thinking about what I have on hand to send out, and who I should send it to. Then I send it off,  and forget about it— getting back to work. That seems to me a healthy ratio. But more than that, I think that a daily Instagram post about your deep thoughts doesn't seem like a good use of your deep thoughts. I don't get angry about marketing;  I don't get resentful. And yes, I think writers really do get noticed that way, but I just mostly feel sad for folks who get swept up in it." "You wrote a book called Idiot Psalms. One of my personal favorites is Psalm 2, a psalm of Isaak accompanied by baying hounds. Who is Isaak?" "There actually is a Saint Isaak of Syria. He was a 7th-century monastic who was bishop for about three hours before he fled back to the desert. I first came upon him while reading Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. One of the characters is said to have read the Ascetical Homilies of Isaak of Syria nearly every day, “understanding none of it,” as I recall.  So that's the actual Saint Isaak. When I became Orthodox, I took the name Isaak; he is my “namesaint,” as we say. Now, when I take communion, they don't call me Scott, they call me Isaak. So these poems, and others of mine, are understood to be spoken by a persona, Isaak the Least." "Would you read the poem?" "O Shaper of varicolored clay and cellulose, O Keeper of same, O Subtle Tweaker, Agent of energies both appalling and unobserved, do not allow Your servant's limbs to stiffen or to ossify unduly, do not compel Your servant to go brittle, neither cramping at the heart, nor narrowing his affective sympathies neither of the flesh nor of the alleged soul. Keep me sufficiently limber that I might continue to enjoy my morning run among the lilies and the rowdy waterfowl, that I might delight in this and every evening's intercourse with the woman you have set beside me. Make me to awaken daily with a willingness to roll out readily, accompanied by grateful smirk, a giddy joy, the idiot's undying expectation, despite the evidence." "Thank you," I say. "I love that final stanza so much that I wrote it down in my journal so I could look at it regularly." "Well, I wrote what I hope, you know. The evidence is not promising, but there is a grace in supposing that despite how unpromising the surrounding evidence—the circumstances of our political lives, of our civic lives, our individual progress towards holiness—despite how unpromising that seems, there is an inescapable deep note of joy that I've been blessed with and count on. "I remember being a boy—maybe three or four years old—and we were getting ready to visit my grandmother's house. I was ready early because I didn't have much to do, and so I walked out into a very crisp winter night, closed the door behind me. I stood on the threshold, my little feet on the doorstep, and as  I looked up into the starry sky I had this exhilarating sense of joy, of beauty. I said out loud, 'I love life!' You know, the expression of an earnest, young person. But that has stuck with me. It was this huge blessing, this realization that it's all okay, now and ever. It was a moment that set me up for resistance against the despair that would woo me later in life." "I think that's one of the reasons why I love your poetry, it has that sense of hope and joy that I want for my own life. We need poets like you to keep singing that hope to us." We said our goodbyes. I gave their dog, Moses, a final head rub. The thought crossed my mind that this might be the last time I would see Moses in the land of the living, which made me want to just sit there for a while, to delay the inevitable departure. Maybe it was the dog, maybe it was the generous kindness I had experienced. Maybe it was the gift of friendship, of finding a fellow pilgrim who longed for hope like I longed for hope. I don't know, but whatever it was, I didn't want to leave. I'm grateful for Scott Cairns, for the little boy inside him who still looks up at the sky and says, "I love life!" I wouldn't mind standing with that little boy more often. Maybe someday I will get a chance to walk with him along a footpath worn by those who came before us, to enjoy the sun on our faces and the laughter in our hearts. Scott Cairns is the author of ten books of poetry. His most recent book is Lacunae, published by Paraclete Press. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Poetry, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best Spiritual Writing and Best American Spiritual Writing. Besides writing poetry, Cairns has also written a spiritual memoir, and the libretto for the oratorios “The Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp” and “A Melancholy Beauty.” Cairns has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was awarded the Denise Levertov Award in 2014. Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

For this Lenten season, we present a series of interviews with musicians and artists about the ways that music has helped them process and work through seasons of loss and grief. Here Andrew Osenga, Royce Lovett, Steve Taylor, Christa Wells, Tim Timmons, Ross King, and John Thompson open up about the role that music plays in times of grief and lament they have experienced. ​ (Special thanks to Dave Trout and UTR Media) If you’ve enjoyed this post 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 time you read this, you’ll know the outcome of Super Bowl LVIII - that’s 58 for those who aren’t used to converting letters into numbers. As a lifelong fan of the San Francisco 49ers, you’ll also know my hopes of cele-bragging online have been ruined as I now plan to crawl into a digital hole and hibernate from social media, licking my wounds well past Easter. I’ve always loved football. There’s no doubt that affection stems from my father. He didn’t know about the National Football League before he immigrated to the United States in the summer of 1980, but by the time I could form memories, my dad was rooting for the red-and-gold team by the Bay. Korean immigrant fathers are known for two traits: a legendary work ethic and a stone-cold demeanor. Both work hand in hand, vital necessities, one emboldening the other as a means of survival in a foreign land. My father was no different. Most of my earliest paternal memories revolve around his work schedule which took precedence over everything else, including church. Before my younger sister was born, we lived in a ramshackle two-bedroom apartment - where no space was left untouched by cockroaches or my grubby adolescent hands... no space, except my father’s work desk, which was immaculate. He worked as a computer engineer so every tool, every drafting pencil, every staple was accounted for and it was a well-known rule that his desk was off-limits. You can guess my father’s reaction when he came home to the sight of me at his work desk playing with a drafting compass I found in the top drawer. Not good news. I never opened his desk on my own again. Even the cockroaches stayed away after that. Don't get me wrong. My father is usually an even-tempered man. Joyful most of the time. He wears a smile as easily as we wear our favorite t-shirts. But when it came to work, he was all business. When he didn’t work he napped. That was the only time I ever saw him rest. (I tell my wife that’s why I like to take naps too—an attempt to subconsciously connect with my father—but she doesn’t buy it.) Sleeping is what many of us think about when we say we need to get some rest. But anyone working from home and taking care of small children knows that sleep alone is an incomplete rest. Abraham Heschel writes in his paradigmatic book, The Sabbath, “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” Relishing is a bit more active than napping. Sleep is a passive retreat. Relishing Sabbath rest comes with a little more energy expenditure. If Heschel is correct, there is a learning curve involved in fully enjoying the Sabbath experience. The idea of learning how to Sabbath makes me think of the Creation narrative. I read Genesis 2:1-3 and the details are sparse. Did God relish? I try to imagine what God looked like when he ceased his work on the seventh day. Did he sit back and admire his Creation the whole day? Was it a calm, serene moment? I’d like to think there was a little bit more excitement involved. Maybe he even expressed, dare I say, exuberant joy? That’s what I see in my spiritual mind’s eye. Throughout the Holy Scriptures, we are given glimpses into the exuberant heart of the Father. The three-fold parables of Luke 15 reveal a Father who is willing to forsake all social norms to express his joy. Zephaniah 3:17 paints a beautiful image of a warrior-father, not shouting war cries, but singing over his beloved child. Our Heavenly Father knows how to relish, even in his rest. This makes me believe there are times when our rest response to the Lord needs to be equally exuberant. My father was exuberant only while he watched football. I’ve always wondered why he chose American football. What did a thirty-something-year-old engineer from Korea know about the gridiron and pigskin? And more pressing, how did he come to love it? I’ve asked him on numerous occasions and, in his dismissive stoicism, he has never given me a straight answer. I don't know… I just watched because the American people at my work talk about it. That would explain why he watched it—to assimilate as much as possible, ingratiating himself to a new people and a new culture. But it doesn’t explain why he was obsessed with it. In Working the Angles, Eugene Peterson sheds light on my dad’s obsession with football. He writes, “Animal wildness is unfettered exuberance. We are delighted when we see animals in their natural environments—leaping, soaring, prancing… [Sabbath rest] is like that: undomesticated. We shed poses and masks. We become unself-conscious.” I’d like to believe, if my father had the words to express it in English, his love for football would match Peterson’s description. That deep down inside, football tapped into a certain kind of unfettered exuberance he didn’t know he needed. He was an immigrant in a new land, learning a new language. Every encounter in English, every bill that needed to be paid, every school function he needed to attend was yet another reason to keep his guard up. I can’t believe there were many moments throughout his week when he could become unself-conscious. He may not have understood all the rules of the game, but he knew sports, and watching the 49ers gave him permission to relish in his own kind of social unmasking, three hours at a time. The seminal moment of witnessing my dad elated, overcome with jubilee, is when the 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals on a last-second touchdown pass from Joe Montana to John Taylor in Super Bowl XXIII (that’s 23). He leapt from his seated position on the couch and screamed to the high heavens while the coffee table and lampstand took cover in each other’s arms. It was an emotional earthquake. In the aftermath, my dad and I went out to the front yard and tossed around the Nerf football he bought for my birthday just a few months earlier. The front yard was really just a small patch of grass in front of our apartment building, no bigger than a good-sized living room. But after that game it was Joe Robbie Stadium. We stayed out for the next hour and ran the same play we just watched on TV. I was John Taylor, he was Joe Montana, and we just won the Super Bowl on a ten-yard slant across the middle. I can easily say that was the happiest moment of my childhood. Grainy footage of that afternoon replays in my mind like it was filmed on an 8mm camera with The Wonder Years theme song playing in the background. For me, learning Sabbath rest has always been an attempt to recreate that moment. Our rest traditions are undoubtedly shaped by the moments in our childhood when we witnessed our earthly fathers engage in acts of exuberant joy, relishing life in ways that were indelibly impressed upon us as children. If my dad loved knitting yarn and I witnessed him overjoyed at the completion of a throw blanket, then I’m certain I’d be justifiably obsessed with watching a two-tone, herringbone stitch, textured throw blanket come together. But he chose to watch football and scream with unbridled joy when the Niners scored a touchdown. So I did too. Still do. In our moments of rest in the delight of the Father, we do so as an exuberant expression of the finished work of Jesus Christ, who is our vicar and our High Priest. Practicing an active Sabbath faith teaches us that the expression of that exuberance is often a reflection of the joy we witnessed in the rhythms of our own childhood families. Genesis 1 tells us we were all created His image and likeness so it’s only fitting that we take our Sabbath cues from the same image and likeness of our earthly fathers, including our Korean immigrant dads who loved the Forty Niners. Daniel Jung is a graduate of Calvin Theological Seminary and a teaching elder in the Korean Northwest Presbytery. He lives in Northern California, where he serves as an associate pastor at Home of Christ in Cupertino. In his spare time, Daniel loves the 49ers, good coffee, and writing media reviews for Think Christian. You can find more of his work here. 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.

[Editor's Note: This post resumes Mark Meynell's 5&1 series on classical music which ran in 2020-2021. The idea is to share five shorter classical pieces followed by one more substantial piece that all fit inside a given theme. With over 600 years of music to draw from, the hope is that you find a few old favorites combined with one or two new discoveries in each post.] The pilgrims who trudged to the Passover in Jerusalem often had to pass through barren, inhospitable terrain. Then, on top of the dangers inherent to being out in the wild, they faced the frequent threat of bandits or hostile inhabitants. It is no wonder that such dangers feature in the poems purposely written for these journeys (the Songs of Ascent: Psalms 120-134). No wonder they put their trust in the God who neither slumbered nor slept, nor who let feet slip (Ps 121:3-4). For they had to endure the scorn and mockery of the worldly (Ps 123:4), hostility from oppressors (Ps 129:2-3), not to mention raging waters and enemy’s snares (Ps 124:5, 7). But such pilgrimages invariably provoked an introspective turn as well, forcing the individual to face not just the terrors of the world but the darkness of the heart. They saw both their brokenness and defiance of God. So, as the pilgrims walk through the desert, they sing Psalm 130, expressive of their spiritual danger. Jesus went into the desert before his ministry went public, facing the demon and the deep cost of his mission. And the church calendar uses his 40 days to remind us of our own need to face inward and upward. We see our sin and our need. It can be intensely painful. But it can also be profoundly cathartic and liberating. This is why music has proved to be integral to the experience of Lent for so many. Over the course of the 5&1 series, we have already had three choral lists for seasons in the church year: for Advent, Christmas and Easter. It is no surprise that the season of Lent has inspired composers to craft some of the most poignant and affecting choral music in the repertoire. So it is to this theme we now turn. One word of warning at the start though. These pieces are definitely not wallpaper music. To get the most out of them, I suggest you take time out to listen carefully (perhaps with the texts printed out to focus reflection) and use as part of your devotions (how about each day?). Hear my prayer, O Lord (for 8 voices, 1682) Henry Purcell (1659-1695, English) The Cambridge Singers, John Rutter (cond.) Henry Purcell is widely regarded as the greatest English composer in three centuries, leaving an astonishing musical legacy before his premature death in his mid-30s. He wrote for all kinds of settings, from the rarefied world of opera to bawdy pub musicians, from the royal court to church choirs. This anthem lasts less than 3 minutes but packs a punch. It is likely that Purcell intended it for a longer work, but never completed it. All we have is one line from the Psalms, but in Purcell’s hands, it becomes one of the most concise and intense cries to God I know in music. Think of it as wave upon wave of heartfelt appeals to God to listen to us. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my crying come unto thee. (Psalm 102:1) St Matthew Passion: (BWV 244, 1727) 'Erbame Dich' (part 2 #39) Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750, German) Andreas Scholl (counter tenor), Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe (cond.) If the Purcell anthem is a precious gemstone, Bach’s epic musical account of the final days of Jesus’s life in Matthew is one of music’s crown jewels. It is monumental, coming in at roughly 2¾ hours, written for two choirs and orchestra, plus several soloists (including Evangelist, a tenor, and The Voice of Christ, a bass). The way it works through the biblical text forces one to slow down and meditate on each step of the action. No wonder many people make it central to their annual Holy Week devotions. We must make do with just one tiny extract, one that picks up on the theme of pleading to God. In context, the alto (or in this recording’s case, counter-tenor) sings one of the most achingly beautiful arias in all music, pleading for mercy in response to the agony of Peter’s denial. Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears! Look here, heart and eyes weep bitterly before you. Have mercy, have mercy! De Profundis: Psalm 129/130 (1981) Arvo Pärt (1935- , Estonian) Theatre of Voices, Dan Kennedy, Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, Paul Hillier (cond.) We are in a very different sound world now, a piece composed in the months after Arvo Pärt left the Soviet Union for the West in 1980. It is a setting of Psalm 130 (Ps 129 in the Vulgate/Latin translation), in a style for which Pärt has become famous. It is slow, methodical, even plodding, perhaps. But this is deliberate, to force us to think about each word. The theme and harmonies move in incremental steps, with a beat per syllable and no great leaps or jumps. It uses only men’s voices, accompanied by organ and percussion. It starts right in the musical depths (taking the text literally) but gradually works its way up the scale until the 4 voices come together in unison. The percussion players are instructed to play ad lib, responding to the musical textures with sounds that somehow give a sense of timelessness and vast spaces. Ps 130 in English here Timor et Tremor from Quatre Motets pour un temps de pénitence (FP 97, 1938-39) François Poulenc (1899-1963, French) The Sixteen, Harry Christophers (cond.) There are similarities between this piece and the Pärt: both take texts from the Vulgate, both draw on the Psalms (in this case, from Psalms 54 and 30); both appeal for God’s mercy as a result of facing up to our sinfulness. But there the similarities end. While Pärt’s is a lilting meditation, Poulenc stops us in our tracks. It is a piece of impassioned urgency that manages to include several sudden mood changes within a total length of under 3 minutes. He uses sinuous melodies and shifting harmonies that mean we never quite know where he is going with it. But it is superb word-setting that warrants careful relistening. I first sang it 35 years ago, and I still hear new things in it! I Thirst and It is Finished. #5&6 from 7 Last Words from the Cross (1993) Sir James Macmillan (1959-, Scottish) The Dmitri Ensemble, Graham Ross (cond.) Regulars may have spotted that James Macmillan has already featured on two of the previous choral lists. And here he is again! So, yes, he is one of my favorites, without a doubt. Here are two movements from a larger work, his setting of the seven words of Christ as he was dying on the cross. Unusually, it was commissioned by BBC TV with movements to be performed on consecutive evenings during Holy Week. It was not designed to be acted out as such, but Macmillan composes something that seems entirely fitting for visual broadcast. He does not simply capture the drama of the crucifixion, but its agonies and even violence. This is no serene, rosy-tinted impression that you might associate with an old master painting. It is visceral and deeply unsettling. I thirst conjures up the utter desolation of the cross. The music is spare and bleak. Beyond the simple declarations of his physical need, the rest of the choir intones words taken from the old Catholic liturgy, the Good Friday Reproaches. They drive home the gruesome irony of the moment. It is Finished then shatters this desolate atmosphere, with violent, aggressive hammer-blows in the orchestra. It is shocking but evocative. As with the previous movement, the choir weaves around the title text with a more traditional Good Friday liturgy. But we are unable to forget the horror of the scene for long, because the hammer blows return before the movement ends. I would certainly recommend giving the whole work your time (it lasts roughly 45 minutes) Miserere mei Psalm 51 (1630s) Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652, Italian) Tenebrae, Nigel Short (cond.) We’re now on much safer ground at last (for many, at least), back in the chapels of late Renaissance Italy. It is another psalm, this time King David’s great song of repentance after his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. It was written for two unaccompanied choirs (one on each side of the chapel, one in five parts, one in four) which take turns responding to the plainsong settings of the even verse before finally coming together at the end. Allegri composed the piece exclusively for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and it quickly gained a mythology all of its own, not least because only three copies w``````````ere apparently permitted beyond the Vatican confines. The story was put about (by his father!) that after hearing it only once, the teenage Mozart was able to write the whole piece down from memory. That’s unlikely to be true, not because it would have been beyond his abilities, but because the piece had leaked far and wide and was sung in many places by the time Mozart was alive. One particular feature that makes the piece so affecting and admired is the soaring soprano/treble line that keeps leaping high above the choir (right up to a ‘top C’ in some arrangements). In contrast to many of the composers shaped by the Reformation, the point of this kind of writing is not so much to focus attention on individual words as to sweep us up in whichever posture before God is appropriate. Here, we come before him in deep sorrow and heartfelt yearning. Here for the full English text. Mark Meynell is 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 the Hutchmoot Arts conference 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. Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash