What are you looking for?

My wife has a gift for spotting pheasants when we are driving. It’s a skill she learned from her dad and I’m always amazed at how she can spot these birds – so well concealed by their environment – as we speed by at 65 mph. “If you just keep your eyes open, you’ll always see something” she told me once when I asked her how she did it. I have found that this is great advice for more than just pheasant sightings, and offers no end to wonder and delight as I learn to keep my eyes open for the God who, as it turns out, has a knack for showing up in the most unlikely places. There are the obvious places where you expect to encounter God – church, the scriptures, prayer, the Rabbit Room (wink wink), etc. – but it’s the times when I encounter him unexpectedly that prove the most potent, precisely because they are unexpected. Familiarity can breed contempt and it’s all too easy for us to become ambivalent to the things of God in the places we expect to find them. It’s kind of like already knowing the punch line to a joke. There’s something invigorating about God catching us off our guard and I imagine, too, that God enjoys keeping us on our toes, confounding our attempts to pigeonhole him. Our calloused hearts are blessedly defenseless against this kind of behavior on God’s part. The element of surprise is one of his best weapons. While God can always be counted on to be faithful, good, gracious and true to his nature, it is possible for us to become too presumptuous and forget that he’s always holding an ace or two up his sleeve. After all, God’s master strokes have always defied expectations: Israel’s deliverance out of Egypt, Christ coming as a baby, the resurrection, etc. Michael Card told me once that you should never finish the Bible’s sentences for it, and of course a part of what he means is that we have a tendency to become too familiar with mysterious and holy things and think we have God figured out, forgetting that, as Lewis put it, he is not a safe lion at all, though he is good. And while I believe God can be found in churches, monasteries, and the other usual haunts and that there is a holiness in established rhythms of devotion and monkish observances of rituals that can lead us to God, I also know there is a romance to the way God takes our breath away by operating outside of the parameters we try to set for him. With this in mind, I love watching for how God may show up in the most unexpected places. It’s kind of like a cosmic “Where’s Waldo” where the stakes are higher and the rewards richer. If I keep my eyes open, from time to time I catch glimpses of God whisking away around a corner, darting behind the scenery of my life, leaving clues, leading me on, further up and further in. In fact, I’m at an age in my walk where I experience his presence more profoundly in the unexpected places than I do in the expected ones. So watching has become a holy discipline. For instance, I rarely experience worship with contemporary worship songs (I’m not making a statement against worship songs, I’m just saying they don’t typically inspire worship in me personally), but when Sufjan Stevens sings of the “Great I Am” in Decatur, or when the bells toll in the heavens in the final scene of the controversial film Breaking The Waves, or when I close the book on Perfection – Mark Helprin’s story of a little Hasidic WWII orphan who goes to Yankee Stadium to save the “Yenkiss” in “the house that Ruth built” from being “slaughtered” by the Kansas City Royals – it’s at these times when every tear I cry and breath I breathe become a holy “hallelujah.” “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael grumps, and then to his surprise and delight, he encounters Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and his life will never be the same. “There’s got to be more than flesh and bone,” Tom Waits growls. “There are angels in the architecture” sings Paul Simon. In movies like The Shawshank Redemption, Magnolia, and Life Is Beautiful hope blooms like an Easter lily amidst the sewage of the worst of our human brokenness and depravity. I find the most tender expression of sacrificial love expressed in the bleak post-apocalyptic landscape of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I discover the strength to carry my own burden as I get lost in the fantastical journey of Tolkien’s Frodo and Sam. I can see glimpses of Christ even in the world of Harry Potter. I think part of the reason why we find God in these unexpected places is because God’s story of redemption is the best story of all, and all other story-tellers are left with no choice but to borrow from The Great Story. One of Frederick Buechner’s most memorable novels follows the character of Leo Bebb, a bit of a religious huckster who in spite of (or maybe because of) his idiosyncratic and often misguided adventures, God shows up. Bebb – founder of the church Holy Love, Inc. – is more or less a stump preacher just barely one step ahead of the law and being caught in the tangles of his own deceits. In all of his shortcomings, however, it is clear that something holy is at work here. Buechner talks often in his work of the hidden-ness of God, and The Book of Bebb was one of the first stories that taught me to watch not only the foreground where the characters are playing their parts, but also the background where God is directing the action. If the devil is in the details, then God is in the subtext. This gives me hope. As far as spiritual exercises go, I confess that looking for God in these least likely places of the music and stories I enjoy may be a bit self-indulgent. I suppose it is my way of whistling in the dark in hopes that God may be at work in even my most unexpected places – in my brokenness, my pain, my jealousy and fear, my anger, my sadness, my failure. These are the places where hope is tested, where hope matters and has meaning.“If you keep your eyes open, you’ll always see something,” my wife tells me. I think she’s right, and so I’m always looking.

Matt: The summer movie season. I can sum it in two words: endlessly mindless. Three months of raunchy comedies and flying stuntmen, formulaic romances and exploding aliens. And I can’t say I’m excited in the least. My favorite time of year is Oscar season. I love a good story. I appreciate memorable acting performances far more than speeding cars. I enjoy beautiful cinematography or clever camera angles more than soft-core porn and fart jokes. And my wish for this summer movie season is that some studios would offer something worthwhile in the middle of the endless drivel. Curt, are you with me? Curt: I’m with you, brother Matt. I’ve considered boycotting theater movies, especially during the inane summer blockbuster season, but I’m ultimately reluctant to give up the big screen movie-going experience, even for a season. And if one persistently mines the depths of mainstream moviedom, occasionally the cinema seeker is rewarded with something of real value. Thankfully, I benefit from living in a metro area that provides some decent alternatives. In the age of the multiplex and megaplex, I sometimes visit a single-screen movie palace showing primarily independent film. It’s slightly on the seedy side, but it shows the indie films I love. My home city also boasts a brand new theater with two screens featuring the classics, critically acclaimed indie efforts, documentaries, and foreign films. So, I do have refuge from the megaplex monster. Thankfully, the summer blockbuster stretch–which runs from May to August–does offer some promise in 2008. That’s promise, not profits. Similar sound, different concept. 2007 was a record year for the summer season with a take of $4.1 billion. While I am a proponent of capitalism, it’s of little concern to me if that record is broken in the 2008 summer season. Give me something that is unpredictable, thoughtful, nuanced, beautiful, and true. Give me a great story. No, the story doesn’t have to be true, but I hope to find truth in the story. And by the way, none of that precludes a good fart joke. I’ve always said, “Never discount the glories of a good fart joke.” What say you, Matt? Matt: You can keep the fart jokes. And even the Apatow comedies, which I think I’m the only person on Planet Earth not fawning over such movies. I, too, have such a movieplex nearby to enjoy good independent film. But I will say that the blockbuster movies can entice me if they’re as intelligent, well-done and just plain enjoyable as Batman Begins. I definitely have a list of the low-brow movies that I’m aiming to check out, including (but not limited to): Ironman, Batman, X-Files 2 and maybe Wall-E (which I’m sure would be a certainty if I had little ones). Other promising titles abound, but I really hope to not give too much to the popcorn monsters at my local cinema. My definitely ‘no-way’ movie which automatically puts me in the ‘loser’ group around my friends: the new Indiana Jones. I could care less to watch an 86 year-old pretending to swing from whips, ropes and rafters. This movie has ‘Jar Jar Binks’ remake all over it (in the same way that Episode 1 absolutely ruined the Star Wars legacy and made it a joke). I already think they took the Indiana Jones series one step too far, so this is even more. What are your hopes in the midst of a busy summer season? And what is your ‘no-way’ movie, if you have one? Curt: In terms of blockbuster fare, despite some concerns about The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, I have high hopes for it. I’ve read that a gratuitous (my word) action sequence has been added and that conflict between Peter Pevensie and Prince Caspian has been fabricated. But I’m willing to wait for the movie before pronouncing judgment on the changes. I’ve seen the trailer and was captivated by the tone. The music, cinematography, and mystical, magical ambiance have me excited about seeing it. I wasn’t enthralled with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but thought it was very good, far exceeding my expectations. Director Andrew Adamson seems to have a handle on this material and appreciates and respects C.S. Lewis’s narrative. They could have hired somebody better (Guillermo del Toro?), but not much better. June finds The Happening in U.S. theaters, M. Night Shyamalan’s follow up to the dismal Lady in the Water. It’s the story of a family on the run from a mysterious natural disaster. If you were as awed by The Sixth Sense, The Village, and Signs as I was, you will understand my eager anticipation of The Happening. More brief observations: 1) I am more eager to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army than I am Iron Man, 2) I will see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, but probably only on DVD, 3) Pixar can do no wrong; Wall-E looks to continue the string of hits that captivate children and adults in one fell swoop. Good for Pixar. Oh, and by the way, take a gander at Wall-E. Is it my imagination or does he look a lot like a junkyard version of Johnny Five of Short Circuit infamy? 4) Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale brought the Batman franchise back to prominence in 2005 with Batman Begins. Will The Dark Knight–set to release on July 18–continue the magic? I hope so, 5) This summer is fraught with superheroes, science fiction, sequel, stoner fluff, and for some reason, T.V. show rehashes. It looks like I’ll be scrambling more than usual to find what I’m looking for. My “No way movie?” It’s Sex and the City. I understand the T.V. show has won all kinds of awards and that it stars Sarah Jessica Parker, but I’ve never had even mild curiosity to watch it on T.V.–for free. So I can’t imagine actually paying real money to check it out on the big screen. Apparently the writing is good, but even that doesn’t inspire one iota of desire in me to see it. Here’s one sleeper that has me interested: It’s called Son of Rambow and according to the movie’s website, it’s “a fresh and visually inventive take on family, friendship, and faith.” It’s a British comedy featuring young Will Proudfoot, raised in isolation in a religious sect in which music and movies are strictly forbidden. Will encounters his first movie when he gets his hands on a pirated copy of Rambo: First Blood, and his world is blown wide open as he becomes secretly addicted to filmmaking. If that doesn’t top the latest sequel to the X-Files movie or The Incredible Hulk (even though it stars the great Edward Norton), I don’t know what does. Matt: Good call on Shyamalan. I completely forgot that summer entry and will be first in line. Ultimately, here’s hoping we’re both proved wrong and some quality is among the quantity (of dollars). Curt: Readers should note that the smaller films–indie films in particular–are by definition difficult to anticipate. The promotional machine that insures that a blockbuster be positioned as a blockbuster before it’s even released, does not exist in the indie world. As such, we will do our best to cherry pick those that we hope will offer high artistic merit and potential for a memorable movie-going experience as the summer evolves. Meanwhile, what are your “must see,” “no way,” and “sleeper” movies for the upcoming season?

This collection is essential to both long time fans and first time readers interested in the work of Flannery O’Connor. My first time to read a handful of her short stories I was helpless to interpret them. One would expect that reading the 1950’s work of a female “Christ-centered” southern fiction writer would be a simple, modest or at least predictable experience. However, while on the surface her material seems similar to other popular characterizations of the South (it is populated with racists, radicals, preachers, proper manners, crooked salesmen, farm animals, old money, haunting landscapes, gaudy outfits, cultural backwoods religion that borders on superstition, a wide variety of physical disabilities etc.) and while she writes in plain, though colloquial, English, the stories and her manner of telling them depict a strange, beautiful, comical and disturbing world all her own. As with any good works of literature, the further I have read into her unique and surreal tales the more I have seen that they are the stories of everyone’s spiritual and physical deformities, including my own. While her work is humbling and full of supernatural grace, I would be amiss not to say that it is incredibly entertaining as well. Published after she died young from lupus, The Complete Stories spans her entire short but prolific literary career, including the first complete short stories she ever wrote (and supposedly would have preferred not to have been published) all the way to her last piece “Judgment Day.” Over time I have come to learn that the best way to understand and enjoy her stories is to read more of them. This collection provides the perfect opportunity.

Hey, folks. Today I had a radio interview with Cindy Swanson of 101 QFL, a station in Rockford, Illinois. Here’s a link to her blog, where she reviewed On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, and here’s a link to download or listen to the interview. I’ve been hiding out in the local coffee shop most days, writing furiously to meet my deadline for book two (the title hasn’t been decided yet), enjoying myself but at the same time remembering that writing takes a lot of work. I’ve been consoling myself with Anne Lamott’s freedom-giving advice for writers: You have to be willing to write a crappy first draft before you can get to the (hopefully) good final draft. I keep wanting to go back and self-edit, to worry over sentence structure, to liven up the dialog, but the book would never get written if I did that too much. With songwriting, you have the freedom to sweat over every word and every line as you go, but with novel writing, at least as far as I can tell (I’m still quite the rookie), you have to write something before you have anything to work with. It’s like the first draft is the clay with which you make the book. In order to make the book, you have to find the clay. AP P.S.  If any of you have read the book (and liked it, preferably), would you mind posting a little review over at Amazon.com?  I’ve heard that it’s helpful.

Question of the Week: “Can you identify a common thematic thread that runs through your work– something that separates you from other artists in your field? Or, in regard to work other than your own, what kinds of themes are you particularly drawn to?” What separates me from other artists in my field? I’m shorter than most every one of them. Matt Conner – I’ve often thought about this idea – what draws me specifically to the music that I love so much? I would have to say the dominant idea is ‘passion.’ It’s something in the emotion of the singer, the poet, the speaker, the artist that communicates the idea they are passionate about what they are singing, writing, speaking or painting about.I’ve found that it can even be things I totally disagree with or ideas that aren’t completely my own beliefs or viewpoints, and yet when they’re communicated in a passionate way, I can still resonate with their artistry. Jason Gray – Most times I’m aware of the person in church who feels alienated by the feel-good, sloganeering, hyped music. Maybe it’s because they’re broken-hearted, disillusioned, or that they are intellectually inclined and are put off by what they perceive as emotionalism or shallow theology. I’m talking about the kind of person who wants to hope, but who is weary of feeling disappointed. I’m aware of the weak and broken, who feel fated to be outsiders, and I want them to know that the gospel is better news than they might dare believe, and that the good news is for them. So in almost every song I write, I acknowledge doubt and try to explore the virtues of weakness. I have a speech impediment known as stuttering, and it’s been a great opportunity for me to explore redemptive ideas of weakness with my audience. I meet people who are afraid that because of weakness, addictions, failures, depression, or any other variety of brokenness they are disqualified from doing anything significant for God’s Kingdom. But it’s my great joy to get to be someone who tells them that they are exactly the ones who should be expectant. Scripture tells us that it is in our weakness that God’s strength is perfected, and if this is true then our weaknesses are our greatest qualifications. So the virtue of weakness is a thread that runs through most of my music. It’s also important for me to acknowledge doubt, fear, pain, and disappointment, in hopes that my music might be a tool to help my audience process their own hurt without losing their heart. I guess I’m always trying to coax out hope that has gone into hiding. The best thing someone ever told me about my music is that in her difficult time of a divorce, trouble with her kids, and professional challenges, my record restored her worship. That is a humbling thing to hear, and something I aspire to in all my work. But the second question, I think I can handle. My answer is this: food. (The broader theme being any sort of creative hospitality.) Anything with a respectable slice of screen time devoted to beautiful goings-on in a lively kitchen, I will watch. I know they’re not the Oscar winners, but “Chocolat,” “Amelie,” “Under the Tuscan Sun,” “Babette’s Feast” and “Spanglish” are all on my shelf. The other night when I caught a glimpse of a scene from “Chocolat” on television, I couldn’t turn it off because I knew what came next: the party scene. Or rather, the party preparation scene. (Since I own the movie, this is a little silly.) In the film, Vianne (Juliette Binoche, yummy herself with her bright lips and red shoes) throws a party for Armande (Dame Judi Dench). The swirling motion of dark brown chocolate and pure white drips of cream, the delicate touch in the seasoning of the prawns, the breeze that blows in, lifts their hair and cools their dewy brows, all underscored just perfectly with lilting accordion cheer, and the resulting slow motion chewing that goes on afterwards at the beautifully appointed dinner table in the courtyard…it all just thrills me. (Fast forward to minute 5:52 in this clip and you’ll get a little insight to what I’m talking about.) Or take “Under the Tuscan Sun” for instance. (Fellow RR boys, I don’t expect any of you to have seen this film, or at least to admit to having seen it. Should you wish to secretly e-mail me and second the emotions below, your bravado is safe with me.) Notwithstanding the fact that I wish that were my life (for the most part), I wish that were my villa to do with as I pleased. Watching the process of restoration, however endless, is utterly fulfilling for me. As an artist, I think that “redemption” might be a looming ideal. I’ve only come to that conclusion, or at least to putting words to it, just now. (Does this mean I’m a “verbal processor?”) Whether it’s in the revival of a home — paying close, sweet attention to the house that it always was, but adding unique settings to make it one’s own — or whether it’s in the old cast-off junk I give new life to in my art pieces (crying now), the ideas of resurrection and re-purposing are attractive to me. Then add the scenes in the movie where it is lunch time and she gets to cook for all of her workmen and I get to watch, and I’m a happy girl. I’ll try to curb my verbosity (ahem) and end with a bit from “Babette’s Feast.” This movie is slow, methodical, sleepy (in the best way possible), until the last 45 minutes roll around. It positively drips with sacred themes (and wine, exotic fruits and seemingly sinful luxury.) When Martina learns that Babette, their maidservant from France, has spent 10,000 francs on the dinner she prepares at the end of the film, she says “But now you’ll be poor for the rest of your life.” Babette answers, so delicately, her grey eyes shining with tears, “An artist is never poor.” And this is where Evie fell apart. I sobbed uncontrollably. This concept has carried me through years of financial worry and wavering trust/distrust that it’s “all going to be fine.” But the comforting thing is this: all I have to do is go to the grocery, buy a bunch of lilies and the perfect artichoke, stop for a lovely bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, sit in the grass with all of these simple gifts and some music, and understand that my Father has made me a rich woman. Like most of us, I suppose, it doesn’t take much encouragement for me to prattle on about myself. And after all, isn’t a writer’s work implicitly all about himself anyway? Those that write for public consumption must admit that they covet an audience. They want to be noticed. They want to be read, to be felt. A believer may contradict, “No, everything I do is about Jesus Christ and points to Him.” Well okay, maybe that’s the goal, but if we hired a literary forensic investigator worth his salt, I’m betting in a day or two, we could find this contrarian’s own fingerprints all over the pages. Shoot, his DNA is probably embedded in the words. In the courtroom of disingenuous writers, his own writing would convict him of writing about–himself. We can’t help ourselves. The thing is, surrounded by so many good writers, both in terms of my writing colleagues in The Rabbit Room, as well as our literate readers and responders, this assignment has me sweating self-conscious bullets. For heaven’s sake, our proprietor is ANDREW PETERSON. My thematic thread? I don’t know. Next to these great writers and artists on the red carpet, with a distant, confused look in my eyes and a nervous smile, I hear myself mumble into the Entertainment Tonight microphones, “I’m just happy to be here.” And I am. Bkhhhwwwwohhhkkkkhh! I’m also known to write about cheese. That’s the essential theme of many of my songs – our human inability, and through faith, God’s total sufficiency. Humanity with its suffering, fears, desires, and finding God living within that human cup.

In parts one and two we found our identity to not be “sin”; rather, when we sin it is no longer “I”. We found that human effort – making the flesh our strength, rather than Christ – is the very cause of sin. And that God, who is love, and the sole source of other-centered love in the universe, created us to be indwelt and to live in a oneness, a willing co-operation with Him. Romans six speaks of the reality of who we are in Christ – dead to sin, alive to God, that we died with Him and were raised with Him to walk in newness of life. Six briefly introduces the thought that it is Law that gives sin power over us, Law being the human-trying-to-be-righteous-by-it’s-own-strength principle. Seven expands on this Law principle, showing us that flesh striving creates a hamster wheel of try-sin-repent that is endless until we step off it and recognize that “when I sin it is no longer I that sins, but sin which dwelleth in me.” Sin is not essentially “I”. We find that it is by the human self trying by will-power to be the new man that we do what we hate, and don’t do what we desire, and that the new man is that in us which deeply desires to be and do everything that God has for us. That’s the summary – a few of the mind altering facts of Romans six and seven. How, then, do we go on to Spirit-driven, rather than Law/flesh driven life? At the end of seven Paul makes a statement; “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” He again states that the real Paul is the one that serves the law of God; he accords himself with that holy desire within himself, and states that it is with the mind that he serves the Law of God. How then to serve God’s Law with the mind, rather than striving by flesh-effort to live up to the Law and failing – instead serving the law of sin? One of the keys is found later in Romans 11 and 12. At the end of 11 Paul goes on into a reverie about God: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Or who hath first given to Him, so as to receive payment in return? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. All things are of the Lord. All. Wisdom. Knowledge. Power. Holiness. Love. Compassion. Kindness. Purity. All things. If He’s the source of all goodness, how much goodness can come from my human effort? After these reverent statements of praise Paul says this: I beseech you therefore, brethren (because God is and has everything), by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. This mind transformation, this renewal, is a major key to walking in the Spirit. Let’s go back to Romans eight. There’s no condemnation to those who are in Christ. Hebrews says if the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins, the worshipers would have had no more conscience of sins. They wouldn’t live in sin-consciousness. To truly trust in Christ and His atoning Blood means we shun the condemnation of the devil. We shut the door on it forever and refuse to live in a sin-consciousness (which all comes from fear and unbelief, which of course is the wellspring of sin). The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus – the inner, living Law, Christ Himself – has set me free from the Law of sin and death. The outer Law, the written code, fulfilled in Christ, is something we have died to and no longer have to strive in effort to keep, because Christ Himself, better than the old covenant, is now in us. The outer Law could not make us righteous; in fact, it did the opposite. It not only showed us our sins, reminded us of our sins, but it actually was a handle for Satan to use to make us sin more. God sent His own Son as a man who lived by faith in the Holy Spirit. This perfect Redeemer died as a sinner; we were all put in Him on the Cross, and that Ephesians 2:2 spirit with which we were infected, “the prince of the power of the air that works in the children of disobedience,” that great big me-for-me spirit which was in us and drove us, was put in the body of Jesus Christ through our co-ness with Him. Jesus became sin for us. He didn’t just pay our sin-debt. He became sin. And why did Jesus become sin for us? Romans 8:4 tells us why: That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. That’s the reason for God the Father and Jesus Christ going through all that – to call out a people indwelt and in willing co-operation with the Holy Spirit. Paul goes on: When we give our attention to the physical, we are controlled by the physical. If we give our attention to the Spirit, the Eternal, the Real, we are controlled by the Spirit, motivated by the Real. A branch can bear no fruit by its own effort; it’s a dead branch unless it abides; if it thinks it can be its own source it will die. The interests of the flesh-life are hostile to God. The flesh – the soul/body – wants comfort, ease for itself; God wants to use the whole man in service to others, in countless dyings and risings to “What my flesh wants,” even unto physical death if necessary. The flesh itself is merely a means, a container, a cup. It is not meant to drive. A well-trained horse is under the direction of its rider, and response to every whisper of a command. In that, it becomes useful, and is in willing cooperation – through faith in the rider. Paul then says that those who are in the flesh – not “following” or “after” the flesh, but in the flesh – cannot please God. He then defines those who are “in the flesh” – in other words, completely given over to their fleshly desires – those who do not have the Spirit of Christ. They cannot have faith in Jesus Christ, and apart from faith it is impossible to please God. And the Hebrews writer reiterates that for the believer, Christ is in us, that although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness, and it will direct our body and give life to it. So – we are debtors to the Spirit, not to the flesh. Through the Spirit – that is, through faith, reliance on God, on what He says about who we are in Christ – we put to death the deeds of the body, all that misuse of our bodies and souls that formerly ran and drove our existence. We abjure fleshly effort, false religious holiness and labor the labor of faith to enter His rest. We fight a great fight of afflictions against the Devil, who will say, “You aren’t holy. Look what you just did. You aren’t one with Christ. How could you have said that?” and all the million monotonous, boring, lame arguments against the Word of God. Interpret reality by your experience. Interpret the Word by your performance. That’s Satan’s smoke and mirrors. The Word says what it says. We’re under new Management. As we trust in this indwelling Power, He flows. I’m a king. I’m holy. I’m one Spirit with the Lord. Christ Himself is my life. He is the Shekinah in this earthen temple. I am bought with a price. I am washed, cleansed, a vessel unto honor. I am a light bulb and He’s the electricity. And as we accord ourselves in faith with what He says, the lights come on. This trusting is a moment-by-moment choice. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God (teknos – full grown sons. In other words, mature). This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; it’s leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit (Jeremiah 17:5-8). Two trees. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do-it-yourself holiness, Romans seven, dependence on one’s own strength, resulting in a parched landscape, a salt land where no one lives. Loneliness. Desperation. He won’t see any prosperity when it does come; he’ll be too busy condemning himself for being a dry tree. The second Tree – the Tree of Life. Christ. Reliance on Him. Outer circumstances won’t matter; this Tree can take the heat and drought because it has deep roots by the stream. It never fails to bear fruit. We choose. Reliance on Christ, renewing our minds as to our new identity in Christ, is a major key in the struggle. And as we’ll see later in Romans 8, the recognition of God’s love and power is a major player in the spiritual battle

I just returned home from a joyous, frustrating, exciting, confused, fun, boring week in Nashville. It’s properly called GMA Week and it stands for Gospel Music Association’s week-long event of seminars, interviews, luncheons, dinners, concerts, schmoozing and culminates in the Dove Awards (the Christian Grammy). It’s an adjective-filled week (see above) for myself because I’m mostly there to interview approximately 25 bands and artists of various types – Tooth & Nail screamo acts to worship leaders. And the process is either thoroughly enjoyable or a Job-like exercise in patience and slow mental torture. Exhibit A – Giant band. Enormous band. Not in girth, mind you, but in record sales. One of the top Christian acts around today, if not the top-selling (I’m not well versed enough in Billboard lists to say for sure one way or another) was easily the worst interview I’ve ever conducted. Any attempts to discuss songwriting, artistry or any level of thoughtfulness about their craft was completely dissolved at the outset. Or should I say that those questions flew over their head. “We just want to sing about Jesus.” Sounds simple enough. In fact, it’s the perfect answer … if we were sitting around in Sunday School. But in this kind of interview, it’s a boring answer. And it’s not a good one. Unfortunately, things get worse. “You know, the music doesn’t even matter. Fast or slow. Good lyrics or not. I’m not concerned at all with those things – whether someone thinks it’s good music or not. The music doesn’t matter. It’s just the platter the meat is served on. So talking about the music or lyrics as artwork is inconsequential.” At this point, I don’t even know what to do. All of my questions are about that very topic. Music critics have been unkind to their music, which in the Christian world is not very common. So I wanted to tackle these questions – wondering if they were aware of such criticisms and making steps to ‘get better.’ Apparently, I was ill prepared. When I first left the interview, I was completely shocked at how poorly it went and how little we had to discuss. I fell back on standard interview questions of tour dates, naming processes and band history. It sucked. And I left feeling dirty – that in some way I was shallow and missing completely what this life was about. Why am I asking those questions? I shouldn’t be concerned with artistry. In fact, why am I writing about music and books and movies at all? Why am I concerned about criticism, in fact? That only separates and divides the body of Christ. I’m called to encourage and exhort my brothers, not tear them down. (Note, this is what this artist told me) And for a moment, he had me. I completely believed him. After all, he said the magic word “Jesus”, which is always the right answer. My very next interview set me back in a ‘right’ place. It was with a solo artist who completely believes that excellence in art, in creation, is essential to being a Christian. To strive toward beauty and truth in the arts is a high calling to this person and it was beautiful to discuss these issues with them. What is it about this divide – to some it’s a mission field with no real thought toward anything but saying ‘Jesus’ as many times as possible; to others it’s the pursuit of the entire package. I recognize that we are all brothers and sisters. At the end of all things, we will be united together under a common banner and Jesus was quick to call us to love one another and that we will be surprised by who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ … that, in other words, I don’t need to crucify an artist or band over their artistic convictions (or lack of) as if they are not Christians. Yet there is this part of me that’s just absolutely sick over this kind of thing. I don’t want to listen. I don’t want to talk to them. It rendered me speechless, ruined an interview and I lose all respect for anything they are doing. So I guess I turn it over here. What’s the proper response?

When I was fourteen, after Mom died and Dad had gone his way, my grandmother sent me to live at a group home in northern Florida. All told, I lived there only two years but, as I would come to find out, those two years were real whoppers. Imagine if you will, me, a fourteen-year-old boy from the suburbs who’d always been more or less an obedient child, well-mannered, a good student, never much in the way of trouble, dropped suddenly into the wilds of a rural Florida cattle farm surrounded by cows, horses, strange woods, and nine other “brothers” who were far stranger than any of the livestock or landscape. Such it was. By the end of my first week, I had learned how to smoke cigarettes, dip Copenhagen, and defend myself against an army of nine pseudo-siblings intent on seeing to it that my new place in the world was clearly established. I learned to be a boy I suppose, in the classical sense, and would set myself a good way down the road to becoming a man before I left. Among all the other boyish things I was learning in those days, there was the art of The Cuss. I was full of boyish amazement upon discovering the effects we could produce with a choice arrangement of consonants and vowels. A word said often among boys without a dropped beat or a second thought could somehow quiet a room and garner a red-faced tirade and harsh punishment if spoken the exact same way in company at the dinner table. This made no sense to me then, but oh, what a sandbox in which to play. We were grammatical pioneers, engineers of the experimentally profane. We’d mix up a bit of an S-word with a healthy shake of the B-word and set it off in range of an adult just to see the explosion. We learned soon enough that certain adults had weaknesses for just certain words. With Mr. Henry, the school disciplinarian, for example, we all knew he’d sputter and turn blue at the gills if anyone dared to hurl a B-word at him. Mrs. Touley, the science teacher, on the other hand was just as cool as early spring under any circumstance that didn’t involve the appearance of a F-word. That was really the ringer wasn’t it? The F-word. That almighty obscenity against which no adult defense could stand. Like burning magnesium, it flared so brightly that it illuminated everything around it and seared colored shadows into your eyesight that lingered long after the fire had died. What a glorious tool it was. Yet, exactly what it was and why it was we hadn’t a clue. Four letters placed together, just so, not so very much different from a duck, or a truck, or even a man named Chuck. That one letter. And why? We wondered, or at least I did, but ultimately we didn’t care. It served a purpose. It was useful. It got attention. It made people listen to us—or so we thought. It would be a while yet before I learned the difference between being heard and being listened to. Vespers was one place we couldn’t really get much talking in so our cussing time was limited and we had to find other ways to make ourselves known, silent ways. It was our clothes we found. Ties, and belts, and black socks, and slacks—all fertile ground for a healthy teenage rebellion. They’d tell us to tie it this way; we’d tie it that. Tuck it in; we’d pull it out. Black dress socks were likely to find their way into the garbage can instead of the laundry basket so that the following Sunday we could claim, and quite honestly, that we hadn’t a proper black sock to our name. One Sunday, during my last summer there, Miss Timmons, our sometime chaplain, decided that our grammatical engineering had got quite far enough out of hand and set herself to its mending. We filed into the chapel, misfits all—some ties hanging to the crotch, others scarcely a hand’s breadth from the knot, some white socks, some black, sometimes both on the same boy, hair as soon combed back as ruffled up. God’s own mess we looked. We made our way under adult direction to our pews and sat, hunched over, elbows on our knees. “Sit up straight!” the adults chided and we would, for a moment at least. One of the adults asked for prayer requests and a dozen hands shot up. “I’d like to pray for my girl,” said one boy. “I’d like to pray for his girl, too!” said another. Snickers erupted. Adults gritted their teeth and tried to maintain the dignity of the service. “Does anyone have any serious prayer requests?” Another few hands stuck up, waving. “My momma.” “Good, good, we’ll pray for Jerry’s mother.” “And I want to pray for my sister.” “And Tyler’s sister, good.” “And my daddy!” “And my daddy’s momma!” “And my sister’s daddy!” Put enough teenage boys together and anything becomes a competition. “I want to pray for Jerry’s momma!” “You shut up about my momma!” The two boys stood straight upright. “I’m gonna pray for your sister AND your momma ‘cause they the same person!” The other boy leapt over a pew and engineered a flash bomb made of a d-word, a splash of an a-word, and a strong dose of f-words to cap it all off. This got the adults involved. A few minutes later, the two boys engaged in the prayer dispute were escorted from the chapel and we were all back in our seats and giggling. When Miss Timmons took the stage, however, we quieted ourselves. This wasn’t out of any respect for the Lord, or the service, and certainly not out of respect for the adults and their clench-jawed attendance of us. No, we were all silent for Miss Timmons because Miss Timmons commanded just the kind of attention that teenaged boys are ready to give. She was very much the sort of woman that a boy is happy to be quiet and stare at. She had a curvaceous, hourglass shape that girls our age hadn’t quiet come into yet and she was so very pretty. She wore a dress that day that, even then, we knew somehow wasn’t quite appropriate for church. It was short, a good six or eight inches of real estate showing above her knee and when she walked up the steps to the podium we leaned forward in a brief moment of hope that the elevation would give us enough angle to let us see things we’d scarcely ever even imagined. Then she turned to face us and our eyes had other fruit to feast on; her low cut blouse framed a glorious pink half-moon of flesh and cleavage. Silence in the chapel. The adults were most pleased—and so were we. What appeal she had was somewhat lessened by her fondness for strange hats, however. She was wearing an abomination on her head that looked more or less like a dead cat. It matched the rest of her outfit, in color at least, but really, does color coordination, however tasteful, ever justify dead cat? We didn’t care. Miss Timmons was a very happy and outgoing person. Most people have an unspoken boundary line across which it is uncomfortable for another person to pass in normal discourse and conversation. This is usually a distance of some one and a half to two feet and except for the occasional handshake or hug, this is an area of the human person that is generally regarded as sacrosanct and is not trespassed upon. Miss Timmons was not the sort of woman that understood this. When you spoke with her she didn’t maintain the proper distance and in fact would prevent you from maintaining it either by constantly taking hold of your arm or your shoulder and pulling you closer. For us as boys, we were all so very cute and lovable that she felt the need to increase this trespass with a constant assault of hugging. Now, had Miss Timmons been of the unattractive type, this facet of her person would present a problem. As pretty as she was though, this peculiarity of hers was very welcome indeed. I suspect many a boy departed her vespers services with less of the Lord in his heart than he had of Miss Timmons scent in his head and to be hugged into that bosom was another form of worship altogether. She clasped her hands together between her breasts and smiled at us. “Good morning!” “Good morning!” we answered in unison—and meant it. “I’m so happy to be here with you all this morning!” Having no one else on stage to touch or pull closer, she actually hugged herself as she said this and encouraged her cleavage to call even more attention to itself. We nodded. “Would you guys mind if I sang a song? I’m just really feeling that the Lord is putting this song on my heart and I want to sing it for you. Is that okay, you all?” She didn’t wait for our answer and proceeded to start the musical accompaniment tape she already had prepared. I don’t remember what the song was. What I remember, as you might have guessed, is the way she sang it. She was an emotional woman and her singing was an indication of this. One white-gloved hand held the microphone and the other she raised to heaven. She threw her head back and closed her eyes, shut them tight and sang her song like a plea for mercy. The dead cat on her head threatened to fall off at the least provocation. Whenever she sang, she always cried—even if the song wasn’t a sad one. I don’t know if she did it out of real piety or if she just wanted us to think she was sincere, but she always cried and this was no exception. “Thank you all for listening to that. The Lord just really laid that on my heart to sing this morning and I hope it blesses you all like it did me.” She hugged her cleavage again. We were blessed. “Now, I want to talk to you all this morning about something that’s really been on my mind. I think we ought to pray about that. You all put your heads down. Lord,” she began to pray with almost no warning like this quite often, “I want you to be with these beautiful boys this morning. I want you to open up their hearts and mines—” it would be some time before it occurred to me that she meant ‘minds’—“and help them hear your Word today.” She went on and on when she prayed, often crying again in the delivery and sometimes she would forget that she was praying and just begin to talk to us again and then after a few minutes would realize that she was supposed to be praying and say, “In Jesus’ name, amen!” This caused quite a lot of confusion as you were never quite sure whether to be bowing your head in prayer or holding your head up so the adults wouldn’t think you were sleeping. “You know what the most dange-riss weapon there is, is?” she asked us? Miss Timmons was also not someone who knew how to use a rhetorical question. We could never tell if she meant us to actually answer or just to consider the question. Consequently, we spent less time considering the actual matter at hand than we did wondering whether we ought to shout out an answer or just sit quietly in contemplation. Finally a boy down in front shouted out, “Machine guns!” She raised her eyebrows at him and smiled with her mouth closed as if to communicate that he should reconsider his answer. “Nope!” she said. “Anyone else?” “’Tomic bombs!” said someone. “Nope, but them sure are dange-riss!” “’Tomic bombs got to be the most dangerous. They can kill everybody but roaches,” he answered. “Yeah, that’s right, I suppose. They ain’t, though! You know what the most dange-riss weapon is?” Eyebrows up. Silence. “The tongue!” This caused quite a lot of looking around in wonderment and no few boys stuck their tongues out as if to inspect them or poke at them in suspicion. “That’s right. The tongue is the most dange-riss weapon of all.” “You cain’t kill nothing with your tongue,” shouted out a boy behind me. The nearest adult leaned over and shooshed him. “Well, let’s us see what the Bible says. You all got your Bibles? Turn to James chapter three.” Most of us didn’t bring our Bibles so we reached for the copies in the pocket on the back of the pew in front of us and fumbled around looking for the book of James while she read. “The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” She stopped reading and raised her eyebrows again as she looked at us. All I could think was that she’d just said the H-word. In front of me a boy leaned over and whispered to the boy sitting next to him, “Did she say ‘hell’?” This was scandalous in our way of thinking. “Now let’s us read the next verse and I want you all to pay real special attention.” She looked down to her Bible again and we all sat in rapt attention to see what she might say next. Most of us had given up looking for James. “All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Eyebrows. “Did you all see what that just said?” We hadn’t. “All,” she said as if the word held some great significance. “All!” she repeated, drawing the word out so long that I imagined it was the cat on her head come back to life with a horrifying mewl. “Awwwwwwwl, the animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea are tamed!” Her entire face was lit up with this revelation. I was completely baffled and told her so with the look on my face. “Who can name me a sea creature?” she asked us. “Come on, now. Who can name me one?” “Sharks!” said a boy to my left. “They tamed ‘em!” What? I thought to myself. The sermon had somehow turned from the danger of the tongue to the naming of, and taming of, sea life. “Name me another one!” “Starfish!” “Tamed ‘em! And reptiles? Who knows a reptile?” “Horny toads!” Now even at my young age and level of physical maturity I could see that this was not going well. “Hebrews tamed them horny toads! It says it right there!” She tapped her finger on her Bible and several of us went back to looking for James because we were sure she hadn’t read something right. Miracles I could take. The parting of the sea? No problem. Water from a stone? Got it. Resurrection of the dead? Check. Taming of the horny toad? No way. Not buying it. “How can they tame sharks?” asked a boy that was clearly as confused as I was. “You can’t tame no shark.” “I don’t know how they done it. Maybe they had shark saddles or something. But it says, ‘Awwwwwl.’ Right there. It says it. So somehow, they must have done it. Ain’t that amazing? But look what else it says. They tamed all those beasts and creatures, but they couldn’t tame the tongue!” This was cause for deep contemplation. A teenage boy is a special sort of expert on things like sharks and especially horny toads and here we were presented with evidence that possibly our tongues were more wild and untamable than either. “Let’s us pray about that.” Miss Timmons threw back her head and launched into prayer again. “Oh, Lord! Teach us how to tame our tongues. Just like you helped the Hebrews to tame them sharks, and whales, and horny toads, Lord, help these precious boys here to tame their tongues. They say things some times that they don’t even know what they saying. I know there’s some boys sitting in here right now that’s probably said some things even this morning that was dange-riss. If there is, I want you to put up your hand right now. That’s right, don’t nobody look now, just slip your hand on up if you said something dange-riss today.” Now this is another of Miss Timmons peculiarities: the slipping up of hands. No matter how often she assured us that no one would be looking and we could ‘slip them on up’ anonymously, I never dared. I was always sure that even though I didn’t look, some other boys would be looking around to find out just who was guilty of whatever sin she was taking confessions of and even if other boys weren’t looking, I had the distinct worry that one of the adults would be taking notes and awarding the proper consequences later on. So I didn’t slip my hand up this particular Sunday, nor any other, but I did want to often enough and I hoped the Lord would count my wanting even though I didn’t get counted in Miss Timmons’s tally. “There’s one,” she whispered. “Yes, yes. Thank you. There’s one—and another. Thank you, thank you. Hands all around. Slip ‘em on down now. Slip ‘em on down. Lord, bless these boys. Let them go on out today with more than what they came in with. Let them tame their tongues, Lord, just like them horny toads. Yes, Jesus. Yes.” Then she slipped out of her prayer, like she often did, and began to address us again with the Lord apparently on hold. “When you go on out of here this morning I want you to think about how your tongue is steering you, boys. Think about it and make sure it’s taking you someplace you’ll be proud to go.” I raised my head and took a quick look around the room to see if we were supposed to be praying or looking up. The other heads were down except for Miss Timmons who had her eyes squeezed shut and her face turned up to heaven even though she seemed to be addressing us. I bowed my head back down and she took the Lord off hold. “Lord, bless these boys every one. Walk with them and guide them that they’ll know the way. And in Jesus’ precious name, amen.” When the service was over, we filed back out of the chapel, mostly in silence. Miss Timmons waited at the door, greeting us all as we passed, pulling us closer than was properly comfortable and hugging us to her bosom. When it came my turn to be hugged at and pulled she smiled at me, patted my cheeks with her palms and said, “Good morning, darlin’. I’m so glad to see you here.” She hugged me and I thought about how to tame that toad. It would be a long time before I realized that what Miss Timmons was trying to tell us wasn’t that the Hebrews were miraculous animal handlers. I spent a good many nights in the months thereafter wondering how sharks were tamed, or whales, or eagles—and yes—horny toads. But after that Sunday I didn’t engineer my acidic grammar-bombs so readily anymore. I learned, slowly, that maybe I wasn’t so much in control of those dange-riss mixtures of f-words, and b-words, and s-words as I wanted to believe, that maybe they were sometimes in control of me. And eventually I would learn new and even more dange-riss words, words that maybe weren’t so explosive on impact but the kind that sink in and slow burn and hurt for days and months and even years after they are spoken, including that most powerful of all, the L-word. As many times as I’ve gone back and read that passage of James, I always marvel that the thing that jumped out at Miss Timmons was the “awwwwww.” I’m at least fairly certain that animal husbandry in the ancient Hebrew world wasn’t as far reaching as she led us to believe, and I wonder if James himself might not want to go back and reword some of what he said if he heard Miss Timmons’s take on it. It’s a disservice to decry the tongue as the most dange-riss weapon, though that is indeed a truth. More accurately, it is the most powerful of tools. When wielded with grace it can build high towers, plant ageless gardens, and calm even the wildest beast. Used carelessly, it can ruin a thing even so guarded and resilient as the soul. A greater mystery, though, is that it can use the same words to accomplish either end. Is it any wonder it gave the Hebrews more trouble than those horny toads?

This week, GMA week, is notorious in Nashville and in the Christian music industry. Thousands of people, from record label employees to signed bands to bands that wish they were signed to songwriters to radio programmers to retailers, descend on this fine town and swarm the convention center and the downtown area wearing lanyards and carrying duffel bags full of free stuff. Like most things on this good earth, GMA week has its good points and its bad points. One of the good points for we Petersons is the Swedish Invasion. A group of friends from the land of my ancestors (who work in Sweden’s music business) visits Nashville every year. They stay busy during the convention until Wednesday night, when the Dove Awards are happening. They’re not too interested in going. So for the third year in a row they’ve come over to the Peterson house for Jamie’s best version of Swedish meatballs. It’s now early Thursday morning and I’m about to go clean up the paper plates and empty water bottles, but first, in honor of our Swedish friends, I thought I’d share with you the video Andy Gullahorn made during our last tour in Sweden. Enjoy. And beware.

Last week I benefited from Derek Webb’s sickness. Derek lost his voice and had a fever and hives and seven corns on the knuckles of his toes. Everything in that last sentence but the part about the loss of his voice is conjecture on my part. Anyway, Derek wasn’t able to do a show with Don Miller at the last minute and was kind enough to suggest that I fill in for him. I had a great time. The audience was gracious even though they were expecting someone shorter and balder with a cooler voice, and after my set I was able to listen to Donald Miller speak for about an hour about Story. That this was the subject of Don’s talk was fortuitous because on the three hour drive to Memphis for the show I had a lot of time to think about Story, partly because of a great phone conversation during the drive with a writer friend of mine, and partly because I’m in the thick of book two of the Wingfeather Saga. Story as an art form has always fascinated me, and now that I’m cutting through the brush of my second book I’m even more fascinated (and more than a little intimidated) by it. Michael Card asked me a few weeks ago what God taught me during the writing of my book, and the first thing that popped into my mind was this: there’s no story without conflict. If I want my main characters to learn something, to change into something more and better than they were at the beginning of the story, then I’m going to have to put them through the fire. One author said that in a good story you chase your character up into a tree, then you throw rocks at him. The only way for Janner Igiby to grow, to become who I intend for him to be, is to ruin his life as he knows it. I don’t think I need to point out how much bearing this has on my life and how I view my journey as a follower of Christ. If I trust that God is good and that he is making me into something unimaginably beautiful then it changes the way I see my troubles. They’re no longer sent from Heaven to torment me, but to make me new. I could go on, but Don Miller says it much better than I, and he also talks about several other aspects of Story and what we have to learn from it. Here’s a link to an mp3 of Don’s talk on story, delivered at Mars Hill Bible Church. What do you think?

After the mad rush surrounding the Oscar Nominations from late last year and a bushel of great movies like “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Into the Wild,” “Away from Her,” “Juno,” “La Vie En Rose” “The Kite Runner,” “Once,” “Lars and the Real Girl, “Atonement,” and others, there was a dry spell that lasted too long. Sometimes the selection of interesting movies is like a banquet table. There’s so many choices, it’s hard to decide. Other times, I can’t find even one movie of interest at my largest local multiplex, the AMC Oakview Plaza 24 (with stadium seating and popcorn that has become far too expensive). And that coming from a guy that has fairly eclectic taste in movies. These capsules should be looked at, not as reviews, but as one guy’s brief summary from which you should feel free to comment: Smart People – Just released, it’s fair and could have been better. It features characters that are depressed for nearly the entire movie. I don’t mind characters that are depressed, especially if they have some redeeming qualities and somehow learn something or grow, but this movie showed the characters rather one-dimensionally. Further, they were one dimensional stereotypes, which makes for predictable movie watching. Ellen Page, the young pistol from the the movie Juno, played a similar character in Smart People–smart, cranky, witty, but slightly toned down from the Juno character. Things We Lost in the Fire – Excellent. Highly recommended. Performances by Halle Berry and especially Benicio Del Toro were exceptional. That guy can act. In a role that could have easily produced a performance that was over the top, Del Toro’s character was restrained and throttled. There were some slow moments, but overall it was a realistic, honest picture. In contrast to the characters in Smart People, this movie featured characters with nuance and shades of gray. Because they reveal themselves, I hoped good things for them. The movie follows the journey of two main characters and their responses to life altering events. It’s directed by Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, who uses interesting close-ups to punctuate deeply felt emotion. I was so impressed by her direction that I ordered Brothers, another Bier directed film and the winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Audience Prize. Martian Child – Better than I expected. As learned later, the reviews weren’t flattering, but I really enjoyed it. John Cusack rarely disappoints. His characters are usually so darn likable. His real life sister Joan Cusack plays his on-screen sister. As a father that raised a son with a disability, the movie resonated deeply with me. It has a lot to say about loyalty and finding the value in people, even when it isn’t immediately apparent, or even when it takes a lot of digging, encouraging, or a lot of whatever. My experience has been that the deeper one digs, the more good one finds. Love removes obstacles that prevent people from thriving. Cusack’s character adopts a little boy who believes he’s from Mars, but ironically, it’s a movie that is remarkably human. Namesake – I really enjoyed it. I’m giving it an 8, on a 1 to 10 scale. Even through it was an Indian produced, directed, and acted film, there were a lot of universal themes. Ethnic cultural protocol is often more global than might initially be thought. With grace and dignity, the movie tracks the life of one family. There’s beauty in the scenery, and beauty in the love and caring of family members, though it’s not always demonstrative. Like Things We Lost in the Fire, issues of regret are one of the major themes found in this movie. Stranger Than Fiction – It’s one I totally blew off when it was in the theaters. Will Ferrell benefits from a first rate script and good supporting performances from the other cast members and turns in a great performance himself which is far afield from his comedic tendencies. It’s a new twist on the often tried “writer becomes part of the narrative” conceit. It’s an amalgam of genres, containing elements of comedy, romance, drama, and fantasy. It’s sweet, intelligent, and weighty; by weighty, I mean that there are important moral questions that the respective characters confront. And they aren’t wrapped up in resolution with pretty paper and bows. Stardust – I didn’t enjoy Stardust as much as I expected. I thought it came off of the rails a few times. There were too many special effects and too many characters that were too poorly developed. In short, it was hard to follow. It was a decent idea that could have been done better. I thought the young Cox actor was very good, as was Michelle Pheiffer. On the ol’ 1 to 10 scale, Im giving it a 5 or 6. Gone, Baby Gone – It’s the Ben Affleck directed movie. Casey Affleck starred and it was, by a wide margin, the best performance I’ve seen from him–ever. It is a very good movie, which could have exploited parents’ fears more than it did. It was a tad too long, but still good. Ben Affleck might be a better director than he is an actor, which is both a compliment and a little jab. The Bucket List – Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. It was better than I expected but not as good as it could have been. Both actors pretty much played to type in this life and death flick. Classic Special: Shane – It’s a classic western starring Alan Ladd. For a western, it was surprisingly nuanced and ambiguous. Like many Westerns, there’s the obvious question of right and wrong, yet with Shane, there are many questions bubbling underneath. It’s far more sophisticated than most Westerns. Ladd’s character is subdued and a man of few words, so we are forced to judge him by his actions, which are often noble. Yet we also learn that he has a notorious past. He’s a man of mystery, but also great good. Where does he come from? Where is he going? What motivates his actions? It’s questions like these that separate it from standard western fare and place it on Top 100 lists. Left Field Documentaries, Otherwise Known as Netflix Specials That I’ve Seen Recently: 49 Up – The latest installment of an English sociological documentary in which a group of British people are interviewed every seven years, beginning at age seven, for a fascinating take on life, love, and human nature. The idea is incredibly fascinating. The work tracks the ups and downs of these people’s lives and puts them on display every seven years. In 1964, Michael Apted interviewed a group of 7-year-old kids in England, all from different backgrounds and with big dreams, and has tracked their lives every seven years since. I don’t think riveting is too strong a word to use. Whether you are a trained sociologist or just intrigued by the way in which human dreams play out, you will find this film engrossing. Mr. Death: Fred A. Leuchter Jr. – Bizarre. Bizarre. Bizarre. It’s about an engineer that designed electric chairs and other capital punishment methods–ultimately losing his career when he researches the Holocaust gas chambers claiming the Holocaust did not happen. This is one of the most off-beat films I’ve ever seen. I watched it with my son because my wife–well, there’s no way she would have been able to watch it all. We alternately laughed until we quite literally couldn’t breath and watched our jaws drop to the floor in sync with the sheer absurdity of it all. Unknown White Male – Filmmaker Rupert Murray tells the true story of Doug Bruce, a man who woke up on a New York subway with no clues as to who he was, other than a random phone number and a British accent. It’s the worst kind of amnesia called retrograde amnesia. For the person that has it, it’s as if their entire past has been erased. They literally don’t remember who they are. Friends and family are strangers. If one is a believer, are they still a believer if they do not recollect why or how they believe? This provocative documentary explores the nature of identity with a real life subject that you won’t soon forget. Have I missed anything? Which of these have you seen? Whether your take is different or similar to mine, post away. What have you seen and do you recommend that isn’t on my list? Your interaction is valued and appreciated. Without it, these posts don’t mean much, so please jump right in. In The Rabbit Room, we toss around words like beauty and truth like chicken feed on the farm but ultimately, that’s the structure by which most of us hope to frame the art that we view. It’s what moves us. It’s at the very heart of why we invest $18.00 each month in a Netflix membership, or join a book club, visit an art gallery, or stare at the moon like a lover. It’s the very heart of who we are and how we were created.

My son is in bed sleeping peacefully, finally. After several days of him being lethargic and downright cranky with a cold, I did a fatherly thing and took him to the doctor’s office this morning, whereupon the boy was diagnosed with a pair of ear infections. “Oh, so THAT’s the problem!”, both parents cluelessly exclaimed. Antibiotics underway, he is sleeping quietly, the first in quite a few nights. Parents are tired, but still awake. Danielle is sitting at the dining room table – currently a makeshift sewing workspace – and is making a few burp cloths, baby blankets and a hooter-hider (for the discreet nursing mother) for a friend’s baby shower tomorrow. She usually puts things off until the last minute. Tonight is no exception. The woman procrastinates like no one else I know. No one, that is, except for me. There are a couple of lights on in the house, the wood floor under her work area is a tangled mess of discarded fabric scraps, thread remnants and snippets of rick-rack, and she, occasionally singing along with her iPod, has no idea I’m writing about her now. I like that degree of obliviousness. I like that she knows how to sew. I appreciate the massive skill she possesses in this arena. Not many people know this about her. She’s really good at it, and if asked, will downplay her skill each and every time, and will also be quick to point out her various works’ minute flaws rather than the solid fact that she took sundry pieces of fabric and material and sewed them together to create something unique and handmade whereas there was nothing but remnants before. She will always overlook the finished product for the immaterial flaws which no other eye will notice but her own. She, like me, is a perfectionist. It drives me bonkers, both hers and mine. She makes people out of strangers, and keeps ragged stitches from ripping. I have been working on a new song for the past 3 days. I’ve had the chorus stuck in my head ever since its melody first entered my brain; usually a good sign. I am taking a break from it now in hopes that writing something else, something about this moment, here and now, will wend its way into the verses of the song on which I’m working. I’ve played this particular chorus over and over, ad nauseum, throughout the house walking around the place with 12-string guitar in hand, humming it and outright singing it aloud at times. My wife has led on that she’s pretty well ready to hear something else. Although she did admit to me earlier today that this same chorus has been stuck in her head too. Ah, a doubly good sign. I wrote a sweet little song about my wife 10 years ago that, in the end, turned out to be a cajun-zydeco, redneck two-step. I’ve been thinking about this the past few nights I’ve played that song at shows, and realized that I haven’t written her a “love” song really since then. Hence, the new song. I remember how easy that earlier song came to be; in a frenzy of pen to paper (ah, the good old days), a stream of consciousness. I rummage to find things to say now, not because I am without things to say (well, barely), but how much more vital choosing the right words is to me nowadays, and how words carry a greater weight than they did 10 years ago. I am struggling to say something new, something that has maybe been forgotten, something hidden deep in the veins of the cloistered self. To uncover and say something that is neither neurologically inept nor saccharine sweet; that is the work I find myself embroiled in. I find that harder to do these days because I feel like I’ve used so many words, almost as if I’ve used up my vocabulary. Plus, I hate repeating myself. I have always been a person of few words, never really knowing what was too much or too little to say. Silence always seemed the wiser choice. But silence can get you into trouble too. It is quite a common occurrence, whenever I offer my thoughts to a group of people (this happened just the other day in a meeting of fellow singer-songwriters), that I manage to hear myself saying who-knows-what and then realize that what I said was ridiculously idiotic and made no substantial sense, nor offered anything new to the conversation. The group passed over the thought as if it were never uttered. Probably a good thing. I am painfully self-aware and have the confidence of a snail. It is in moments like those that I, already a man of few words, feel I say too much. Beauty in this world is not always an easy quality for me to see. I often have to make myself look for it, it seems, the older (and crankier?) I get. How many times have I found myself cursing the ground I walk upon, cursing the fuel companies for nearly $4 for a gallon of gas, cursing people, cursing the skies when they rain too much or too little, cursing the words I choose or choose not to say. It takes work to train the eyes to see what may not be readily visible or what may be lurking beneath the surface of things. After all, the spiritual world is supposedly paralleling our own, just out of sight of our own narrow field of vision and our own comings and goings. Here, I consider my wife’s sewing skill, and how she must first wash the various pieces of fabric she will eventually sew together because, if not, they will tear apart upon first washing of the finished work. It is an age-old truth. New wine into old wineskins. New life into old lives. New sight into old eyes. Saying nothing of threadbare souls, fat men and the eyes of needles, button-holes or Singer sewing machines, thank God for wordlessness, for stitches, and a seamstress to create something out of nothing.

One of the things I love about being a part of the Rabbit Room is the permission it gives me to be a little self-indulgent. I can talk about the real stuff that moves me or tickles my mind that I don’t really feel like I can talk about anywhere else. I only hope that it’s useful to at least some who take the time to read and that, like me, they find an unexpected treasure that helps bring clarity in a world of numbing chaos. I don’t take your time or trust for granted! So in the spirit of a little self-indulgence, I want to talk about my new Tom Waits record. For those unfamiliar with him, Waits is an artist/composer/actor whose trademark gravelly voice was described by one critic as sounding “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car.” If you’ve not heard of him, you’ve most likely heard others cover his songs (“Downtown Train “ sung by Rod Stewart, “Jersey Girl” sung by Springsteen, etc.) I’m planning on writing about Tom Waits’ music in a later post, but for right now I just want to focus on his voice. My parents recently got me Tom Waits’s newest record entitled Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards. It’s a three disc set of his songs that didn’t fit on any of his other records, which is really saying something considering how quirky and out of left field Waits’ records are. Working my way through the set, I got a big grin when I got to track 3 on the second disc. The song was called “The Long Way Home”, but it wasn’t the first time that I’d heard it. I first heard “The Long Way Home” sung by Norah Jones and loved it as one of the better tracks on her “Feels Like Home” record (now you know. I listen to Norah Jones). It hit me as a sweet little song about taking a long walk home in order to spend more time with her walking companion. That’s just how it always hit me. But hearing Tom Waits sing it was a revelation. It was like hearing it for the first time and the lyric took on a whole new personality when growled by the world-weary voice of Tom Waits. It turns out that Tom wrote the song and that it’s about the kind of person who no matter how much he tries, he’s more or less fated to have to learn things the hard way, to always have to take the long way home. At least that’s the way the song hits me when Tom sings it. I listened to both versions back to back and the lyrics are the same, but I never really heard them when Norah was singing. And that’s just the trouble with a sweet voice like Norah’s – you’re likely to miss the point. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a great artist with a lovely and interesting voice. But a great voice isn’t always what’s best to sell a great song. In some cases, it might even be a detriment. In an interview on the Stop Making Sense DVD by the Talking Heads, David Byrne says that the better a person’s voice, the harder it is to believe them. I thought of the difference between artists like Celine Dion, Josh Groban, and Michael Buble in contrast to Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and of course Tom Waits and decided that maybe Byrne is on to something here. I hope AP doesn’t mind me using him as an example, but he and I have talked a number of times about music critics who have dogged him for his voice. But to me, Andrew’s voice is perfect. I love it for what it is and I think it’s beautiful, believable, and sincere. It has a gentle sweetness to it. I love that voice because it’s the one that has consistently brought the heart of God to me. The same is true of Rich Mullins and Mark Heard. For different though similar reasons, it’s why I’m drawn to the voices of Daniel Lanois, Damien Rice, Sufjan Stevens, and most of the artists I love.  It’s the imperfections that make these voices so compelling. Norah’s version of “The Long Way Home” is really good, but I believe Tom Wait’s version. Norah’s is pretty, but Tom’s broke my heart and made me present to my own life and the way that I seem wired to always have to learn the hard way. That gritty, rasping voice of his moves me to tears almost every time he employs it in the service of a sad and hopeful song. If I might be so bold to use the word, I would say that it’s the ugliness of Wait’s voice that makes the song’s beauty more convincing. And increasingly I find it’s this very thing I look for in books, movies, music, or any other kind of storied art. Take Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Road, for instance. It’s one of the bleakest and most brutal books I’ve ever read, and yet it’s exactly this that makes the tenderness and hope of it so believable. The older I get the more I appreciate contrast: hope shines brighter set against the darkness of despair (The Road, The Lord Of The Rings); tenderness makes more sense to me in the context of brutality (as in the film Life Is Beautiful); the more I see the virtue in a good Tom Waits song. I think the application (if I can be so self-indulgent as to propose one) is that it’s not the best, strongest, or most beautiful parts of who we are that are most compelling or even useful in the employment of God’s Kingdom. It’s our frailties, brokenness, and even the ugliness of our deepest secrets and struggles that will make the hope we proclaim believable. It’s this that puts God’s grace on display and shows the world what the work of Grace really looks like in a real person’s life. Sometimes, this very thing might even happen in something as unlikely as a Tom Waits song. (If you’re interested, you can listen to the two different versions in iTunes by clicking here for the Tom Waits version and here for the Norah Jones version.)

In a recent email I sent out to those on my email list, I talked about Centricity’s recent decision to release “Everything I Own” as a radio single. We are offering you the radio version for free and I thought for long-time fans it warranted a little explanation. So here’s the longer version of what I wrote in that email: “Centricity Records has bravely decided to release “Everything I Own” as the next single to radio. I say brave because it’s not the typical kind of song you’d expect to hear on radio (both lyrically and musically). But it is a song that we feel says something important, so we’re opting for a single that has more heart than it does dance mix potential. 🙂 Centricity played the song for some of radio’s big decision makers who felt that most stations would not play the song on account of the lyric “demons of lust” being stronger language than their audiences are accustomed to. I’ll be honest and admit to being frustrated and offended by this initially – how can I hope to minister and really get to the heart of matters if I have to be afraid of how Christian radio’s more timid listeners will react? It’s this kind of thing that I sometimes fear is hurting Christian music as I wonder if we are guilty of “tickling ears” as the bible warns against. Are we trying too hard to give listeners what they want instead of what they need? (This is especially relevant when you consider that lust and pornography are at the top of the list of issues plaguing our culture.) But the story of the gospel is the story of God coming down, meeting us at our level. So after months of prayerful consideration, we all decided that the song’s message was important enough for us to be willing to meet radio listeners where they’re at and make a minor lyric change for the radio version. The song’s value goes far beyond one line, and if changing it helps get this song heard, than we decided it’s worth it. I take comfort in thinking that for those who might hear the song on the radio and go on to listen to the original album version, the original lyrics we changed will actually take on new emphasis! In the end the changes felt less like compromise and more like sensitivity, and as weird as all of this could have been, the new lyric is quite lovely. We hope radio embraces it and that it is a blessing for those who hear the song and take it to heart. With the new lyric we also gave the radio version a musical treatment that makes me wish we would have thought of it for the album version! My friend Matt Patrick added some gorgeous guitar work that really sweetened the track and we have ended up with something that we’re all really excited about. We hope you will be too! We wanted to offer the song to you for free as our way of saying thank you for your support and friendship. It will be available as a free download for the remainder of April on my myspace page (click here, and then look for the song in the music player and click the download button.) If you like it, please share it with others. (NOTE: If you don’t do myspace, you can also download the song from here) Thanks so much for your support! Consider this a little glimpse into the hard work of making artistry, ministry, and industry play nice together.

The air is full of an earthy, livestock smell that is somehow both horrible and wonderful. Small children stare goggle-eyed at carnival games or beg to ride the carousel as impatient mothers jerk them along behind. Teenagers strut around, haughty, obnoxious, hand-in-hand, others, lurking behind, engage in the silent and awkward battle of adolescence. An electric firmament wheels overhead carrying angels up, down, and around, its raucous, momentary gleam outshining the antediluvian glimmer-light beyond. Mad, calliope sounds and the din of a thousand-thousand voices wrap us all in waves of clamor-induced deafness and somewhere nearby a motorcycle’s guttural belch punctuates the night. The county fair. I wander through this landscape of communal madness and wonder if I’m appalled. By turns it’s amazing, exhilarating, lunatic, and abominable. I’m glad it’s here; I’m glad it’s almost gone. I’ve seen enough of the spectacle, it isn’t why I’m here, and I go in search of the Arts and Crafts exhibit. The fair is, in this turn at least, beautiful to me. It is right and proper that a community should hold up its art, its craft, and honor those that offer it–if only for one brief week each year. I find the exhibit at last, tucked into a small building on the outskirts. Inside there is some measure of quiet. The place is empty. I’m alone. I walk through the displays, smiling. Watercolors, oils, a quilt ten years in the making, gorgeous fruits and vegetables canned up for years to come, a dozen colored-pencil permutations of Naruto, etchings and engravings, photographs of sunsets and butterflies and children’s rosy faces, a charcoal sketched self-portrait of a black man in a white room, a pie, a pastry, a clay hand clenched into a fist. Not all are well-executed. Some are plainly awful. But they are all the expressions of a community of people. Each piece hanging is a word uttered of the soul. Some ill-formed, misunderstood and mispronounced but all spoken in hopes of being heard. And I’m alone here, listening. Of all the crowd, only I. Outside, the multitude is engaged with the noise, and the food, and their hundred carnal delights. Bacchus slouches, drunken on his throne, and eats. I’m reminded of the church sign I passed on the way here: “You seek that which consumes you.” I begin taking mental notes of each entry awarded a ribbon and end my tour taking more interest in which pieces were passed over. I believe art feeds on appreciation. People create as a way of self-expression, they are trying to say a thing for which they haven’t words and when a person engages that creative instinct, they deserve to be acknowledged. If they aren’t, the instinct atrophies–they join the crowd outside. I believe this is true on a community level, also. If a society ignores its art, an important part of its identity loses its voice and a silenced voice is fertile ground for frustration, anger, and upheaval. I read in the news that a school district is cutting its art and music programs and I think about that church sign and wonder what is consuming our community. It certainly isn’t beauty or truth. We, as a society, are consuming ourselves with success, money, sex, and self-gratification, a great, eyeless, serpent engorged on its own tail. I leave the exhibit. No one sees me go. The sounds and lights of the carnival swell, pushing everything else from my mind. I buy a funnel cake and make my way through the crowd, toward the parking lot. The metallic squawk of a radio from behind makes me turn. A deputy jogs past, talking into his walkie, his head turned down to the microphone on his shoulder. Ahead of him a group of young people are crowded together, shouting, the sounds of violence almost lost in the scream of the calliope. They scatter as the deputy arrives. I lose sight of the commotion as I turn the corner into the parking lot. On the drive home, I think about the works on display, how few they were, how valuable. I wonder who it was that created them and I hope their voice is strong. It will be a long and silent year before it’s heard again.

Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again. Several people in the last few weeks have commented to me about how glad they are that they discovered Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow here in the Rabbit Room. It really is a remarkable book, and I still can’t recommend it highly enough. It won the prestigious National Book Award when it was first published in 1978, and was only the beginning of Wangerin’s career. Saint Julian is a re-telling of the ancient legend of the saint who was cursed with the prophecy that he would one day be the instrument of his parents’ death. Julian flees his home for love of his parents and embarks on a journey into war, loneliness, love, and of course, redemption. That this is a saint’s tale implies that redemption is coming, but the road Julian takes before it ambushes him is long and heartbreaking, making it that much sweeter when it comes. It’s dark, but this book was written with such talent, with such a strong, gentle hand, that I never felt anything but that this story was going to pull me close to the memory of God’s faithful mercy in my own life. Eugene Peterson said of this book: “Walter Wangerin’s storytelling never fails to take us into a world resonant with salvation meanings. With Saint Julian, the worst of which we are capable becomes stuff for the best that God can achieve with us. We read and realize, ‘Why, yes–even I could become a saint.'” John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture: “Saint Julian isn’t a ‘historical novel,’ nor is it a fable, but rather an act of literary sorcery–white magic, to be sure–whereby a medieval tale speaks to our present moment with a force like the ringing of a great bell.” Walt Wangerin, though thirty years older now and sick with cancer, is still writing words that dance and whirl and fling color across the canvas of imagination; he is serving Christ with the gift of his pen; he is loving us with the stories he is writing. And because of the nature of stories, and words, and books, people will be blessed by the work of his hands for many, many years. I write this wondering if Walt will stumble on these words, and hope that if he does he finds encouragement here.

“When I sin it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” With this phrase in Romans 7, Paul divorces his new creation identity from sin. Far from saying, “I sin because I am a sinner (an identity statement), he says he sins because there’s something in him that is “not I.” This “not I, but sin” is the reverse of the great Galatians verse, “Not I, but Christ.” So we find that sin is not basically “I” – and neither is righteousness “I”. This puts our humanity in the middle ground where it belongs, as a vessel, slave, branch – a thing containing, following the orders, and dependent on the life of someone else. Neutrality, not sin or righteousness, is the hallmark of the essential human self. The born-again believer, one who puts his faith in Jesus Christ, has been freed from the slavery of Eph 2:2, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience (the Greek word from Strong’s there is apeithia, which means literally, “the unconvinced”). Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and his lusts you will do,” indicating they weren’t following their own strong desires; they were driven by an inner father, a propagator, just as Jesus was driven by His heavenly Father. The Gospel is an either-or proposition. He that is not with me is against me. There are no half-measures here. If we’re not born-again we cannot see God’s Kingdom because we live in darkness, as children of darkness. Whether that darkness is the black muck of alcoholism and drugs or the more subtly insidious blindness of legalistic religion doesn’t really matter; both spring from the same source, a satanic mindset that is desperately trying to become something in and of itself rather than accepting the life of Christ within itself. That’s the sin of Lucifer, the light-bearer. He rejected the Light, and so became darkness masquerading as false light. He would be his own Source. Now, I’m not a dualist. Satan is not God’s evil counterpart; he’s a finite created being who has fallen. But there are too many verses dealing with an either-or: two trees (Gen 2:9), two gods (1Kings 18:21), two gates and two ways (Matt 7:13, 14), two kinds of vessels (Rom 9:22, 23), two kinds of sons (sons of the Devil and sons of God), two princes (John 12:31), two women and two sons (Hagar and Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac in Galatians), and even two birds (the unclean raven and the clean dove of Noah) and two kinds of foods (clean and unclean). None of these things mix; there aren’t partially clean foods, a partially false god, a partially-allowed bondwoman, etc. There aren’t vessels of half-wrath and half-mercy. To the contrary, the Word continually teaches this either-or approach. “For you were (past tense) once darkness; now you are (present tense) light in the Lord…” Not part light and part darkness. We were sons of the devil, as the Pharisees, operated and motivated by the false spirit of Eph 2:2; now, Jesus Christ, through His perfect sacrifice and resurrection, has made us into new creations; He’s made us into sons of God. We were vessels of wrath, but now are vessels of mercy; once slaves of sin, now we are slaves of righteousness. We are inhabited by Christ, “Greater is He that is in you,” or the alternative, “than he that is in the world.” This is why Paul’s pattern in most of his letters is to write first of identity, then behavior. A rare exception is Galatians, where he goes straight for the throat of the independent-self concept. But in most of his epistles Paul goes on and on about our new identity, what Christ has done, who we are in Him, that we’re kings, priests, holy, perfect, one Spirit with the Lord, that we no longer live but Christ lives in us, dead to sin, dead to Law, and the rest of those jeweled realities. We recognize our true identity first and foremost, and then see that our behavior will flow from that reliance on Christ within us. “For you were once darkness; now you are light in the Lord. Live, then, as children of light.” In other words, you’re on the top of the mountain of holiness. You don’t have to climb step by step to get there on broken glass and nails to become holy. Holiness Himself lives in you; rely, and if you’re relying your behavior will show hospitality to strangers, love for your wives, respect for your husbands, etc. The Pauline pattern: You are this – so step out in faith and rely on Christ in your actions. Be it.” Be-ing precedes doing; doing does not cause being. The other way, Romans 7, is to try to act righteously in order to gain the identity. That’s the point of Romans 6-8, Galatians, and the book of Hebrews – and more. Reliance on Christ within us is better than human effort (because it actually works). At the end of 7 Paul says this: So then I myself serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the Law of sin. Note how he again refuses to identify himself with sin. What does this statement mean? It means when I follow the Spirit within me, when I accord my mind with the truth of being dead to sin, dead to flesh-effort, alive to God, then I manifest or follow the Law of God, which is “love God and neighbor.” That’s living according to my real self in Christ. Conversely, if I follow flesh tendencies as indicators of Reality (thoughts, feelings, reactions to circumstances) then I’m once again thinking I’m an independent “I” that has to be good, effectively cutting myself off from Christ’s power in me. “ In Gal 5:2, Paul says emphatically to believers, “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.” The power of Christ in us will not come through us – it is not effective and is of no value – if we put ourselves under the Law, under self-effort, under strain and striving rather than sufficiency and rest in Him. We’re often too busy with do-it-yourself sanctification to let Him use us as His vessels. I was hoping to dig into Romans 8 but felt impelled to talk more about the end of 7. In 8 Paul explores in more detail what living according to the Spirit really means. In 9 he shows that Spirit-directed life leads to the expression of God’s nature through us – “my life (and even my salvation if I could give it up) for others.”

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking to the students at Lipscomb University, here in Nashville, for a convocation series called “Stories of Lived Discipleship”. You’ll notice right off the bat that the introduction was inspired in part by a discussion here in the Room from last week. Here’s the manuscript, for your reading pleasure (or displeasure). The Old and the New I got in trouble for using a dirty word when I was in the third grade. I remember being in homeroom, sitting at my desk but still managing to be in a huddle of boys talking about the things that are of utmost importance to third-graders. We talked about things that we boys had in common, things that were assumed to be true, so our conversation was not as much an exchange of ideas as it was a passionate, pretentious blab session of stating (what was to us) the obvious. It was plain to such a discerning group of young men that girls, for example, were an abomination. Girls were to be avoided at all costs, partly because they failed to see the sublime glory, the near unbelievable and existential beauty of a big-rig Mack truck. I filled my notebook with pictures of these trucks, these sleek works of diesel craftsmanship. If evidence were needed to convict third-grade girls of being uncultured and deeply, deeply broken, one must only point to Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, and note the dull, unresponsive reaction on a girl’s face. To a third-grade boy, however, it was almost unbearably awesome that a big-rig semi (a red one, no less) was conceived that actually transformed into a robot (a cool looking robot, no less) with laser cannons. I might need to take a brief intermission. I know you’d like me to go on and on about Optimus Prime, but I won’t. The thing we were talking about in the huddle that day, the dirty word that got me into trouble, was Hell. I said Hell in the third grade. The other kids gasped. I’m not exaggerating. And this wasn’t some private Christian school where the moms all wore denim dresses and bonnets. This was a run-of-the-mill Florida public school, where the rebellious kids bandied about all manner of bad words. A kid leapt from his desk, broke away from our huddle, and ran to tell Mrs. Something-or-other about my transgression. There may have been a parent-teacher conference, and there may have been a public flogging; I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything after that last four-letter-word popped from between my lips and whizzed around the room like an unstoppered balloon. So after that elaborate setup, here was the subject of the conversation in which my potty mouth flushed, so to speak: Theology. We were talking about church. After the chorus of praises for Optimus Prime’s awesomeness died down, somehow we segued to talking about church, and sin, and…Hell. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday. I told them this: If you’re good, you go to Heaven. If you’re bad, you go to (GASP!) Heeeeeelllll. And the word echoed off the walls of Mrs. Something-or-other’s yarny, cray papery, primary colory, alphabetty classroom. That was the Gospel as I understood it, as it was implicitly taught to me by my church, my family, my Sunday School teachers. That is the Gospel as most people today understand it. Bad boys go to Hell, good boys go to Heaven. Fast forward about two years. I was nine years old. One Sunday morning at church, on the index card in the back of the pew, I checked the box next to the sentence, “I’m not a visitor but I would like to be baptized.” I knew that baptism was Something I was Supposed to Do. I knew that I had sinned, was a sinner, and that that I needed what to my young mind was a free pass out of Hell. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even pray about it. At that age I only really prayed that I wouldn’t get caught when I was up to no good. I just checked the box and dropped the card in the offering plate when it went by. My dad noticed it (my dad was the preacher, and still preaches today), called me into his office later that week to talk to me about it. He asked me, “When you do something wrong, what do you feel inside?” I thought about it for a minute, trying to think of the Right Answer. I thought back to how I felt earlier that day when I had done something rotten to my little sisters and said, “Guilty.” This was partly true. I usually felt a thrill when I did something wrong, usually a twisted sort of glee, but I had to admit that somewhere in the mix, there it was: Guilt. My dad nodded and said, “Okay. You’re ready.” So that next Sunday during church I sat on my knuckles, tried to keep my back straight, bounced my knees with the toes of my feet firmly attached to the floor so as to keep my fidgeting silent. Then it came. The Invitation. Right on cue, when my dad said, “If anyone here would like to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior…,” the organist glided to her place and played a somber hymn. When everyone stood to sing, I walked down the center aisle and stood next to my dad. I remember the way his belly brushed up against my shoulder, his hand on my neck, as we sang the fourth verse of the hymn just in case someone else, moved by my penitence, had checked the box and would be joining me. While I cried for some reason I couldn’t figure, my dad had me repeat the Good Confession: “I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, my Lord and My Savior.” Then I went upstairs and changed into a white robe, descended the steps into the lukewarm baptistery water, and partook of the ancient sacrament of baptism. When I came up out of the water, I remember trying to sense, to really sense the Gift of the Holy Spirit, but nothing really felt any different. I did feel happy. Though my short life so far had been one of vast disobedience, yet I had obeyed in at least this thing. Later I stood at the church doors beside my dad, wearing my normal clothes again, my hair still wet, and shook hands with everyone who walked by. I was a Christian. A follower of Christ. A disciple. Fast forward two days. Word got around that a kid at school had torn a page out of his dad’s Playboy magazine and was passing it around between classes. I relished the thought of seeing it. And later, when I finally had my turn to look, I relished the image on the wrinkled, glossy magazine paper. I carried that image around in my third-grade heart, right next to where the Holy Spirit, I assumed, resided. Christ hated me, I figured. He had cleaned up the neighborhood and moved in, just me and Jesus and the manicured lawns of my temple-of-the-Holy-Spirit heart, and for two whole days things were great. With one good, long, wide-eyed look at that piece of paper, some trashy people moved in to my heart and the whole place went south. At night, in my bed, wrapped up in my Empire Strikes Back sheets, I laid there coming to terms with the fact that I was going to go to Hell after all. I was doomed. The Holy Spirit, in my young boy’s imagination, was nothing more than a weak old man in his pajamas, standing in his tiny front lawn waving a rolled-up newspaper around and cursing the hoodlums that were populating and multiplying in the temple area at an alarming rate. For the next ten years of my life my sense of obedience to God, my belief in God, and my desire for God fought a losing battle with my hormones, my rebellion, my spiteful tongue, my greed. I would’ve told you that I was a Christian. I would’ve told you that I was a disciple of Christ. But ten minutes later I would be lustful or angry or deceitful, and I would’ve seen no problem with that. It was fun, and besides, Christ hated me anyway. And I figured that if he didn’t hate me, he probably should. Either way, he wasn’t someone I wanted to think about, or to be near, or to obey. I wanted to taste of the forbidden fruit in a way that would have shocked Eve herself. (I’m not saying that I did, but that I wanted to. This isn’t a bragging session but a confession.) My sin was not a slip of the tongue, or a lapse in judgment. Mine was a calculated, passionate, boisterous rebellion of the heart. My hypocrisy drove my sense of righteousness in one direction and my sense of wild, unadulterated selfishness in another so that they diverged in a wood like two roads. Instead of turning right or left, I chose the barren rot of the wasteland between. I went to church and smiled at the sweet old people. I told funny stories at family dinner. I was like a caricature of Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver, all smiles for Mrs. Cleaver but up to no good whatsoever. It occurs to me that I was less than a caricature. I was a phantom, or was becoming more like one every time I said “Hallelujah!” with my mouth but in my heart growled “Give me something or someone I can use.” A phantom floating through the halls of my high school without a care in the world but for myself and my vile devices. I don’t picture the Holy Spirit in my life at this time as that angry old man. I see him now as Aslan, bound to the Stone Table of my heart. Anything to keep him quiet and out of my way. The carousing, wicked, mocking beasts I put there are gathered around him, shaving his mane, heckling and spitting. But if you look into his sad eyes you can see the fountain of strength that waits for its moment to burst forth and cleanse the temple. I see the Holy Spirit as a formidable, shining Being laid low not because anyone bent his back but because he is stooping to level the gray city that spread in my heart like mould. He is descending into the fray to rescue what is left of his lost servant, his missing sheep, his prodigal son. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. And suddenly, the light breaks through. I was sitting at a piano in an empty church building. I had sensed for a while the spring returning, the rivers thawing. The snow that covered the wide fields of my heart began to melt and water the seeds so long frozen. A change was coming. I sensed the change coming, and I ached for it as if my life depended on it. And it did. It was a Rich Mullins song. “If I Stand.” Then a few months later, “Sometimes By Step.” Sometimes I think of Abraham, How one star he saw had been lit for me He was a stranger in this land And I am that, no less than he And on this road to righteousness Sometimes the climb can be so steep I may falter in my steps But never beyond your reach Oh God, you are my God And I will ever praise you I will seek you in the morning And I will learn to walk in your ways And step by step you lead me And I will follow you all of my days That song became my most earnest prayer. I remember playing the piano for a band that sang it at a youth conference fifteen years ago, and that night I walked another aisle, even though I was supposedly a sponsor with the youth group. It seems a little hokey to me now, but that night in East Tennessee I committed my life to service to God and his Kingdom. I had finally come to the end of my strength and could run from him no more. I laid my life down, and said, like the horse to Aslan in the C.S. Lewis story, “I’d rather be eaten by you than be fed by anyone else.” He stooped into the fray and lifted my weary body out. He was Hosea, and I was Gomer. He was David, and I was Mephibosheth. He was Aslan and I was Edmund. Like Peter, I confessed his name, then like Peter I denied him again and again and again. Like Peter, I wept bitter tears. And like Peter, I am forgiven. Fast-forward fifteen years, and here I stand. I look at that summer as the time I finally learned to love the person of Jesus, not the idea of him. I think of that as the beginning of my discipleship. Everything up to then was the Old Testament, when things seemed darker, savage and archaic. I was so many of those characters—Eve gobbling up the forbidden fruit, Noah drunk in his birthday suit, Abraham lying to save his own skin, David letting his lust have its way, and the people of Israel and Judah over and over again, loving God then chasing after their idols, then repenting of everything but those mysterious, persistent high places. In my Old Testament days I was plagued by God’s holy Law, in constant fear of him even though he said over and over again that his faithfulness was great, his loving-kindness everlasting. I really thought that I had to learn to be a good little boy or I would be cast into the outer darkness where I would forever wail and grind my teeth together from the unbearable pain, fear, and rage. I feel chills describing that even now. But then, he comes. Jesus appears when all seems lost. He suffers, dies, and rises again, then he sets into motion his Church, his Kingdom. A New Testament. Suddenly my baptism makes perfect sense. Suddenly my church camp dedications and re-dedications become a part of this greater story. Christ in his mercy reaches back that far and redeems it, claims it for his own. People ask me when I became a Christian. I never know quite how to answer that question, which I realize would make my Bible college professors a little annoyed. I was born into a Christian family, was surrounded by and assaulted by the Word of God at every turn. One day I checked a box because I knew I was supposed to, then the next thing I knew I was sopping wet and shaking hands in a receiving line. I sinned, repented, sinned, repented, sinned, repented and sinned some more for ten long years. Then one day, out of the blue, the Lion roared. I didn’t hear it as that at the time. At the time it was a thousand small graces strewn across my path: a surprising urge to read my Bible one morning; a sudden appreciation of my parents’ steady faith; the catch of my breath at the way light rests on the hill; then one night at the piano I heard coming out of the boom box speakers the broken voice of a broken poet, singing about the unwavering love of God. I could go on and on about my life with Jesus over the past fifteen years, which is when my discipleship really began, starting with that summer when in my heart Jesus turned over the tables and drove out the moneylenders. The cleansing of the temple. I have found that I still sin, though I know you must find that hard to believe. I still sometimes clench my jaw and drive my fist into the steering wheel, angry at the persistence of certain sins in my life. “Who will save me from this body of death? But thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The Great Comforter reminds me in a deep, gentle voice that the law has been fulfilled. The temple is clean. He reminds me that I’m not carrying around just the Law and the Prophets, but a New Testament, a promise that hope is not futile, forgiveness is real, that the grace of God banishes my shame and makes the geography of my heart spacious and pristine and inhabited by the very Spirit of God himself. Discipleship is a long walk with the Light of the World blazing inside you. He may lead you to periods of deep rest, he may lead you into frightening places, but he will always lead you to what is best for you, all so that he may bring you closer to himself. He invites you deeper into his heart, just far enough so that you aren’t burned to a crisp by the holy fire, then he helps you grow that much more into who you’re meant to be. Again, he pulls you deeper in, and again you feel like you might just die. And you realize that you have become that much more like him, and you are grateful, astounded by his mercy. You find that what you once thought was killing you is giving you life. It is transforming you. And that word, “transform”, in the weirdest, cheesiest way, brings me back to Optimus Prime. I didn’t mean for that to happen. But Optimus Prime brings me back to that conversation I was having with my third-grade buddies about how scary Hell must be. And that makes me think of how downright ornery I was in high school, which makes me think with great relief about the way the Great Story of the death and resurrection of Christ sank into my very bones. And that makes me think of how dear a friend Jesus is to me now, how tender and steadfast, how gently he abides and assures me that I am his, how he takes away my many fears. And that makes me think of this verse: “…those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” Amen.

If there was any doubt of my citizenship in the geek nation, I’m about to erase it. Yes, I am a dweller at the fringe, a fan of the science fiction. In my own defense though, I don’t care for Star Trek so much and I’ve never dressed up as Han Solo (not in public anyway). So why the admission, you ask? Because this past Friday night, my inner geek was in full bloom. The final season of Battlestar Galactica has arrived at last. The show is a near total re-imagining of the original 80’s series in which the last remnants of the human race are on the run from the vastly superior Cylons. Their only hope of survival is escape to a mythical place called Earth, a planet that might not even exist. Amid a wasteland of horrific programming on the Sci-Fi Channel they have somehow managed to produce this one jewel. The cast is A-list, the characters are crisp, the look and feel of it is authentic and, all joking aside, there is no reason to apologize for watching a show this good. Like all good science-fiction, its qualifier isn’t space ships, epic battles, or ray-guns (though all are present), it is the questions it asks. It establishes a compelling premise and uses it to explore all sorts of questions about politics, religion, good and evil, and the nature of man. It delights in following its suppositions to their logical conclusions and punctuating them with jaw-dropping space battles that should make George Lucas hang his head in shame. Where else can you see an intergalactic homage to the Exodus story in which “Moses” jumps a spaceship the size of a city out of lightspeed directly into a planet’s atmosphere where, caught in the gravity-well, it hurtles to the ground, guns blazing, only to jump out again at the last possible second as the human race is liberated from slavery. That episode might be one of the great moments of television history. I’ve got chill-bumps just thinking about it. Yet, more than that, the creators have succeeded in creating an amazing ensemble of nuanced, broken, and painfully human characters (even the ones that aren’t human). Spelinspektionen bötfäller och drar in spellicenser: https://videospelautomater.com/blog/spelinspektionen-botfaller-och-drar-in-spellicenser.html. Saul Tigh, the starship’s executive officer, and fighter pilot Kara Thrace are two of my favorite characters from any TV show. The magic of it is that most of the time I hate them; they are driven by such self-loathing and self-destructiveness that it’s nearly impossible to watch them fall apart without rooting for them and hoping that somehow they will find a way out of their wretched existences. One of the reasons I generally dislike television is that most series are created to be perpetual, you know the main characters aren’t going to die, you know the primary conflicts will resolve in the last ten minutes, you know it’s just going to continue until it finally peters out and signs off with a whimper when the ratings hit the bottom. Not so with Galactica. Like Twin Peaks, Lost, and Babylon 5 the story is deliberately finite. There has been a resolution in place since the beginning and the writers have been writing their way toward it ever since. This makes for much better story-telling by far. Here people die, actions have real consequences, and the end is near. If you haven’t been watching, I cannot stress enough how important it is that you avoid seeing anything from this season, or any other season, until you’ve started at the beginning. Trust me, there are things that you do not want to know until it’s time for you to know them. Vis a vis some recent discussion here at the site, I feel like I should mention that the show is PG-13 for the usual reasons. The show is definitely not for the kids, nor is it for base entertainment–but if you are looking for something that will engage your ways of looking at things, I challenge you to embrace the geek within. The days are numbered. The fate of the human race is written. Who is the final Cylon? I can’t wait until next Friday night. Note: I’d love to discuss some plot points in the comments section if anyone is interested so I’ll put a SPOILER WARNING here. Read no further unless you want your experience ruined.

After last week’s ridiculously fun introduction to the On the Table feature, I’m a little worried that the real deal will never measure up. I have confidence in our illustrious contributors though and am sure it’ll be a piece of–wait for it–cake. Golf clap please. Thank you, thank you. What do you do to jumpstart the creative process when the juices aren’t flowing? A half hour later I picked up my guitar, started humming a melody, got it down on tape, and then wrote the words to A Living Prayer, which is the last song on Lonely Runs Both Ways. The entire song came out in one shot, probably the easiest time I’ve had writing any song (30-40 minutes). It’s a childlike prayer-ish song, simple in construction, not a cathedral of a song, yet I get more email about it than any song I’ve written. Too much effort, strain, produces blockage. We think its the other way around – that when things are blocked we have to try harder. But really, in songwriting as in improvising or playing a sport, what is required is a relaxed awareness. A runner doesn’t start a race by tensing up his whole body; a musician can’t improvise if he is trying too hard; and a Christian can’t be Christ to his world if he is striving like a constipated duck to “be like Jesus.” ________________________________________ This week I’m painting on my Sabbath – anything away from my laptop. I suck at painting, so it’s certainly not a hobby or even something I enjoy. But I’m trying something different.Whatever it is, it’s important to understand that knit into the very creation of man was man’s limit or inability to keep going. As hard as we try, we can’t avoid the natural rhythms for which we were created without “crashing,” “burning out” or “hitting the wall.” The Sabbath was meant for man. it was a gift. We forget these things – that we were made to stop, enjoy, and just be.Therein lies the success, in my opinion, for the ability to continually create. We talk about the need to find inspiration when we have writer’s block, which certainly comes, but I think the first thing to analyze is simply our manmade rhythms in light of the Creation rhythm.” ________________________________________ Quite often I have the seed of idea planted while I’m driving down the road. If it requires detailed writing, I pull over and hammer it out for a few minutes. If a word or two is enough to help me recall, I’ll drive and write at the same time. These aren’t recommendations; I’m just telling you what I do. No project is worth plowing into the rear end of the car in front of you.I keep a file of words. New words, old words, funny sounding words. Melange, mellifluous, sesquipedalian, and contradistinction are all words I’ve never used in anything I’ve written, but would like to. Oops. I just did. I knew that file would come in handy someday. Ideas rarely present a problem for me. My greatest writing challenge comes in focusing and refining ideas. That, and knowing when and how to quit. That’s it.” ________________________________________ I just try to put myself in the path of things that will move me – certain kinds of movies, life experiences, books, music, etc.I know Frederick Buechner’s name gets mentioned here a lot, and his work and way of seeing the world consistently stirs my deeper waters and turns me on creatively. Movies have traditionally done it for me, too. I remember I wrote about three songs the week after I first saw “The Shawshank Redemption.” Good conversation with friends yields about as much fruit as anything else. Prayerful reflection and listening to my life are crucial as well. The main thing is that I never know when or where lightning will strike, so I try to always have my creative antenae up and be prepared to receive whatever comes. I have an iTalk for my iPod that you plug in the bottom for taking voice notes. This is an invaluable tool for me. In a pinch I’ve been known to call home and leave an idea on my own voicemail for me to retrieve later, warning my wife not to listen to that particular message. These tools are useful, but honestly the best ideas are always the ones that won’t leave you alone, and so they are less a thing you try to capture than something that captures you. I don’t know how to find these ideas, or how to be found by them, but I suspect they have something to do with being alert and quiet and creating space in your life for them to live, move, and have their being. Discipline is key, too. Ideally it’s good for me to spend a little time each day being creative. I rarely do… I’m too easily distracted by email, deadlines, my record label’s expectations for myspace activity, or reading celebrity news :-). I try to be disciplined with my input, too. I alternate reading novels and non-fiction, reading scripture in the morning and “extra-curricular” books before bed, movies that afflict me followed by those that entertain me, etc. Learning other creative disciplines (like painting if you’re a musician) I hear helps, too, though I don’t have a lot of experience with that myself.If none of these work, there is always the alcohol and illicit drugs as a last resort. ________________________________________ 1. If I’m stuck at the beginning trying to figure out those first few words, I will sometimes write the words “Dear Travis” or another friend’s name at the top so I’m no longer writing an essay, but a letter. You’d be surprised how little editing you need to go back and do when you’re finished, going at it this way. 2. If I’m stuck in the middle, I’ll write and then read out loud what I wrote, and tweak things verbally—especially if I’m tangling with a structural problem. Sometimes reading aloud untangles awkward phrasing and redundancy and things of that nature. 3. If I’m stuck with the finishing, I’ll usually employ the anti-kick start. I’ll put the thing away for a day or two (if I have the luxury of time). I call this the “marbles in a box” stage of writing. I’ve got a lot of ideas all written down, but they don’t hold together. Instead, they’re all just kind of rolling around together like marbles in a box. A few days away from focusing on those ideas helps me figure out why I want to say them, giving me points into which the marbles eventually (hopefully) roll. 4. I suppose I should add that necessity is the mother of invention. There’s nothing like a deadline to kick start the creative process. And there’s nothing like a deadline to put an end to a previous creative endeavor. I’m a big fan of the discipline of having to take a work as far as you can, but then having to put it aside because it’s time to move on to the next thing. It keeps me from being too perfectionistic and obsessive. I guess the jump-starter here is that having more than one project going at a time can a bring creative burst to the one you need to finish and keep you from getting wrapped around the axle of the thing you should really be moving on from.” ________________________________________ It didn’t happen. I missed my wife. I missed my kids. I missed the rhythm of piano lessons, home school, visits from friends, walks through the woods with my family, unloading the dishwasher, folding the clothes. And I found that sitting in this quiet house with nothing on the calendar but “WRITE THE NEXT CHAPTER” made doing that very thing nigh unto impossible. What I learned was that I’m only really productive when I’m supposed to be doing something else. Knowing that Jamie’s here at home holding down the fort gives songwriting/book writing a sense of urgency, which is part of it, but there’s another not-so-noble part of it too, which has more to do with procrastination and avoiding chores. When I was in Bible college, that I was supposed to be taking notes on the life of Jeremiah made writing another verse to “The Chasing Song” seem wildly appealing. If I know I’m supposed to be mowing the yard, I’m suddenly moved to pick up my guitar and lock myself in the bathroom. We’ve been going to the monthly Cane Ridge (the name for our little corner of Nashville) Community meetings, and after the potluck dinner a city councilman or local historian or high school principal will speak for an hour or so. After I wipe the pecan pie from the corners of my mouth and push back from the table to listen to the latest on the rezoning of some intersection or other, I’m seized with the need to break out my journal and write, say, the synopsis of book two of the Wingfeather Saga. I’m sad to say that I’ve also gotten a fair number of song ideas during sermons, and not because I was listening. It’s always good idea to have a pen and church bulletin handy, just in case. My wife knows that I don’t take notes so when she sees me scribbling during church she knows what’s up. But the people sitting near us must think I’m quite holy.” ________________________________________ When I’m writing a book, I constantly remind myself, “I don’t have to write a book today. Today I’ve only got to solve a few smallish writing problems (e.g., how to get a character from here to there in a credible manner, or how to convince the reader of the two following things).” Taking that matter-of-fact approach gives me a framework in which the more mysterious aspects of the creative process can assert themselves. And the amazing thing is that they always do. I’ve been at it long enough that I have learned to trust the process. I’ve learned not to panic when the right words and ideas don’t come. Beneath the level of conscious thought, there are things happening that we’ll never understand. What looks and feels like writer’s block is often just a part of the process; it’s as if your mind (or heart) is saying, “Don’t rush me…” ________________________________________ 1. Music: Lyrics create mini-movies that run through my mind and inspire colors and imagery. The very words sometimes even become part of my work (copyright infringement?). Melodies put me in certain moods, so if I’m aiming to paint an eerie, lonely moonlit sky (which is one of my favorite things to paint), I’ll go with Ry Cooder or Stevie Ray Vaughan (the instrumental stuff — the gravelly voices of these two greats are not conducive to pensive night scenes). I could name some of my other studio favorites but that would just result in yet another, interminably long list. (Maybe I’ll do that at some point, but not here, not now, for the love of…wait for it…Pete.) 2. Organizing: I must have order. Artists are not the messy-pants goof-offs that you may so often hear that we are. We are a strange breed, a breed who need spatial harmony. Nail bin squared up to the box of old silver forks, drill bits arranged in their little box from shortest to tallest, paints and brushes laid out neatly, clean water and paper towel for my colors, the compartmentalized tray of tack nails ordered smallest to largest and separated into black, silver or copper, wood selection lined up and ordered according to size and color, detached typewriter keys and postage stamps in their old metal film canister containers, oh, and tools! My power drill battery must be on the charger, my hammers lined up like heavy-headed soldiers, and my tin snips and needlenose pliers on their respective hangers on the wall. 3. Refreshment: I have to admit that a tasty beverage does help the process, or at least makes it more celebratory. Sometimes it’s a good strong cup (or five) of French press coffee, sometimes my favorite Swedish tea with cream. Other times it’s a cold microbrew (or five) or a pretty tumbler of red wine. They all have their seasons and their own appropriate times of day. 4. Draw a bird, a moon, or a tree: These are simply my favorites. I have pages upon pages of them in sketchbooks. They are my go-to, I know how to draw them, and nothing makes a creatively clogged soul feel better than being able to create something lovely and to do it effortlessly. It passes the time and provides more opportunity for asking myself, as I squeeze the tube of ultramarine blue, “So Evie,what are you going to do this time that is different than all of the other times?” 5. Take a walk: Clouds turning from peach to violet, budding trees, brightly colored houses with funky yard art, friendly cats, unfriendly dogs, the smell of just-cut grass with that distinctive onion-y tang, neighbors who wave at me; I don’t know if it’s just the mechanical motion of my feet moving or if it’s the general sense of well-being walking gives me that almost always yanks open the floodgates of ideas….I don’t care. All I care about is that it works (and gets my heart rate up). When I arrive back at my little blue door, I leave it open so that the good vibes/presence of the Good Lord/fresh air don’t get left outside. I like to give them plenty of opportunity to follow me in. 6. Tinker: When it comes down to it and I’m at my end, when I’m close to ripping my hairs out of my head one by one, I begin to pick up little bits and pieces of the junk that fills my studio. Remembering where and when I picked up each piece or recalling the story behind a certain ginger canister (the candied kind) or bright green bolt (thank you, John Deere) is often fun enough for me to get lost in. And getting lost is often the best thing for me to do when in this state of near-insanity. This step is especially helpful when there’s a deadline. “Deadline” should probably have it’s own point on this list because it sure does whip me in the rear to get moving. However, I hate that this has to be the case with me more often than not, so I will not afford it its own place on the official list. So there, Deadline. Take that. 7. Pray: Okay, now I look like an impious mess of a girl because I put this last rather than first, but the whole truth is that I am in a constant state of “Lord, I’m open, hit me” while I’m in the creative swing. It’s just dangerous not to be. Stupid, obviously uninspired things happen when I’m not. If I did not have any other assurance that God is real in my life, the moments where art works have come together on my workshop table flawlessly and seemingly without anything I have done — these moments would be the telling of his goodness, and his being my Creator Father. _________________________________________ It works for me and the only reason I can come up with is that I’m the sort of person that likes to look like I know what I’m doing. I know that sounds ridiculous, but if I’m left to my own devices with no one else around I’m far more likely to sit and stare at Conan O’Brien reruns than I am to actually create anything of my own. But if you put me in an environment with other people around, watching me, suddenly I don’t want to look like a bum. I try to look busy. I use that lunacy to trick myself into being actually busy. So I’m afraid that oftentimes what gets me started is something as shallow as appearance. Once I get rolling though, I can usually pump out a good chunk of work. Another thing that really helps me is having a deadline. I’m one heck of a procrastinator and someone giving me a solid deadline is great motivation. I think it probably goes right back to the whole ‘looking busy’ bit of not wanting people to think I’m a bum. One more thing. There is a lot to be said for pure, boring, discipline. When I wrote my first book for instance I gave myself a goal of a thousand words a day, and for the most part I held myself to it. Now a thousand words a day isn’t a lot but there are times when even getting to a hundred is excruciating. What I found, and what really surprised me then and surprises me still, is that the writing I do when I least want to, the writing that is the hardest to churn out, somehow, is often the best. When I go back and edit something that was very easy for me to write, I tend to find that most of it gets cut. It’s bad. But the stuff that I really have to struggle with will many times be tight, succinct, and very well put together. That makes perfect sense when you think about it, but it sure sucks in practice. So there you have it. Do I look busy?”

I remember as a kid hearing stories about guardian angels that excited my imagination and kept me vigilantly on the lookout for angels I might “entertain unawares.” As I got older I guess I was tempted to dismiss these notions as perhaps a bit fanciful. But I have a sneaking suspicion that Taya and I may have met a couple angels the other night. After dropping off our boys at my parents, we were driving home for one last night of sleep in our bed before heading out on a six week spring tour. On our way we hit a deer as we were going 65 miles per hour. It came out of nowhere and there’s no way I could have avoided it, though I swerved hard and nearly ran off the road. The impact rocked our Dodge Caravan and smashed up the front and driver’s side door. The weeks leading up to our departure for the Spring tour had been filled with several difficulties that had left us feeling a little beat up and discouraged. Saying goodbye to the boys had been hard, but we were faring pretty well thinking the worst was behind us when out of nowhere there came a violent reminder of how fragile life is. Not only were we distraught for ourselves but we felt sick over the fact that we had mortally wounded an innocent creature. We were a bit dazed when somebody pulled up to our van and came to make sure we were okay. If there are such things as guardian angels who watch over us and minister to our needs, then I think I may know what ours look like. A woman emerged from the car who was as sturdy as she was stout of heart and looked like she might have fit in with the kind of capable people who pioneered this land in it’s infancy. After making sure we were okay, this strong woman of the prairies asked her driving companion, a skinny girl a little rough around the edges whose eyes were as pretty as they were fearless, to get the tire iron out of the back of her car. She intended to finish off the deer to make sure it didn’t suffer. As my presence of mind slowly began to return I remember thinking I should probably go out and do the unsavory deed instead of her, but I was stunned and frozen in my seat, more than a little horrified at the thought of what she was planning to do. Thankfully, the animal was dead before she could get to it and I was not only grateful that the deed wouldn’t have to be done, but even more so that we would be spared having to see this fearsome woman do it. She then pulled out her cell phone and said she had the highway department on speed dial. Her friend proceeded to pull an orange reflective cone from the trunk that she put out in the highway to help alert the oncoming motorists of the deer that still lay in the middle of the road. Having got the Highway Department on the phone, the first lady reported the incident and then put me on her phone for the police to take my information. She also made sure I got a report number and told me what I would need to do for my insurance company. We thanked her and I didn’t know what else to do but lamely give her a CD which I happened to have in my backpack. She thanked me and they were on their way. We limped our van back home and as the shock began to wear off it occurred to us how bizarre our encounter was with these women. They both struck us as a little quirky and surreal. Granted it could have been because we were in shock, but still – what are the odds of an unlikely couple of ladies stopping to help us immediately after our accident who had the highway department on speed dial, a reflective traffic cone in the trunk, the will to dispatch a large animal, and who left us with parting instructions on insurance procedures before whisking away into the night. We never even had a chance to get their names. Their care for our needs, the suffering animal, and also the other motorists was executed with such swift precision! If there are such incidents of encountering angels, this certainly could qualify as a case study. The worst part of the accident was how it triggered in Taya the awful memory of an accident that she witnessed a few years ago when the car in front of her hit a deer then ran off the road hitting a tree in the ditch. The car was on fire when Taya, a certified first responder, went to the vehicle and pulled a little girl from the backseat. By that time others arrived and were trying to get the grandmother and the other granddaughter who had both died on impact out of the car, but they were unable to do so before the car’s engine exploded and the vehicle burst into flames. Taya held the little girl and comforted her as only Taya can do before the ambulance arrived. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that for that little girl, Taya may always be remembered to her as the angel who pulled her out of a burning car and who spoke peace and comfort during one of the scariest moments of her life. And that’s something worth thinking about. Do angels watch over us? I’m persuaded to believe they do. But I also suspect that God’s care more often than not comes to us through other human beings willing to reach out in somebody’s time of need. Were those two quirky ladies our guardian angels? Or were they just kind people who were willing to make themselves available to us in our distress? Is my wife Taya an angel? Well of course I think she is, but I’m a little biased. Whether there are supernatural instances of human encounters with angelic beings is hard to say, but that God would supernaturally send us help in the form of another human being is indisputable. Maybe each of us will have an opportunity to be a guardian angel to someone in need. I pray heaven help us to recognize those moments for what they are and give us the courage to stop and play our part.

Many years ago, I was involved in a conversation about Jesus junk. Like most here in The Rabbit Room, I’m as offended by Jesus junk as I am moved by its counterpart, art that magnifies the glory of God with beauty and truth. The question we posed was, “Of all the Jesus junk on the market, which piece has the most redeeming value?” I chose the WWJD bracelet. Hey, if I had to pick one thing, the WWJD bracelet seemed as good as any. At the time of the discussion, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets were a hot item at Christian bookstores. In fact, they were so popular that a shopper could probably find one at Sears or Walmart. For all I know, they may still be out there. They were mainstream, baby. The WWJD bracelet shares some characteristics of great art (why are you rolling your eyes). It says something, but the message doesn’t assault us like a 2X4 over the head. At least not in the explicit way that lyrics on Christian formatted radio might. Further, the WWJD bracelet has layered meaning. Besides, “What Would Jesus Do,” some believers think of the initialism as, “Walk With Jesus Daily.” Still others think it means, “What Would Jesus Drive?” Less known is that this phrase found popular acceptance with Christians over 100 years ago in the 1890s. The use of the phrase became popular then as the result of a book written by Charles Sheldon in 1896 called, “In His Steps.” Had my great grandfather been on his toes, he could have made a mint marketing WWJD bracelets to general stores. Similar to other great art, we may be inspired to act or refrain from acting based on the inspiration found in the piece. We may never know how many F-bombs were averted as the result of the WWJD bracelet, but I’m willing to bet that it’s a lot. More than 39 for sure. Finally, as a conversation piece for nonbelievers, they were second to none. Though I grew up in church and became a believer after a 3rd grade youth group teacher used colored construction paper to illustrate the gospel (black for our sinful hearts, red for Jesus’ blood, white as snow for a redeemed heart, thanks Mrs. Raether)–the gospel didn’t become especially alive and vivid for me until a church camp experience when I was in junior high. After that, I started using a saying with my believer friends that was in retrospect half-cheesy, but also–just like the WWJD bracelets–was kind of an accountability tool for us. When we returned home from camp, any time we wanted to call each other on the truth or to encourage each other to “do the right thing,” we started using the phrase Remember Something. It was like a spiritual secret code, similar to the WWJD bracelet. By invoking the Remember Something phrase, we meant to remind each other that we were called to walk a different path than what we walked before. allslotsonline.casino/en/ , log in to Frank slot casino! Casino sign up mirror on our site!. Remember Something was a reminder of camp, and camp was a reminder of Christ. Initially it was part of our inner circle but over time the phrase, Remember Something caught on with the rest of our school friends, believers and non-believers alike. Though our non-believing friends had no earthly idea of the origination of the phrase, they began using it–unknowingly reflecting a truth or reality to which they didn’t necessarily subscribe. To us, it was both hilarious and moving. It would be cool to be able to say the phrase led to specific discussion opportunities with nonbelievers, but I don’t remember anything like that happening. We did have plenty of intimate discussions with our nonbelieving friends, but those conversations came later, mostly in high school. By the time we were sophomores, the Remember Something phrase largely dropped from our vocabulary. Junior high cool and high school cool are two different things, you understand. Every two years, I have a long standing pact to get together for a mini-vacation with two of these boyhood buddies, Bill and Ron, both of whom attended the same high school and private Christian college with me. When we get together, we often slip back into our early days vernacular–including the Remember Something phrase. It’s mostly just to be silly, but deep down I think we understand and appreciate the bond that such a small thing helped create among us, as well as the curiosity and involvement it created among non-believing friends. Thinking back (and maybe to our shame), we didn’t always use Remember Something in the most honorable of ways. Imagine, junior high guys behaving dishonorably? For example, I don’t know that teaching somebody a lesson about sharing their Peanut M&Ms was the best use of our Sunday schoolboy idiom. “Give me some of your M&M’s.” “No.” “Please.” “No.” “Remember Something.” “Oh, all right, here ya go.” Jesus would no doubt have shared His Peanut M&Ms–of course–but as you might imagine, sometimes this phrase became a tool something like a holy sledge hammer for lending legitimacy to the pilfering of somebody’s candy. Or worse. It cloaked agenda (ouch), manipulation (ouch, ouch) and selfishness (triple ouch) within the confines of piosity. What started as a pure expression and affirmation of God’s abiding love sometimes morphed into something not as pretty. The basis for Remember Something was something quite beautiful in an innocent sort of way. But when it became fodder for an agenda–even an honorable, spiritually correct agenda–if felt manipulative, heavy-handed, and controlling. Have you ever experienced art like that? Remember Something.

My wife has been laid up for a week recovering from surgery, and her mom drove up from Ralph, Alabama to help out. Of course, “help out” pretty much meant, “do everything.” Amy was in the bed, and I was slammed with two church services in one week on top of my typically hectic schedule when Grandmama checked in and took over like Michael Jordan. Family dirty laundry disappeared into the morning mist. The children received nourishment and attention, but not from me. “What happened to the mini-van?” Grandmama got out the shopvac and had her way till the Sienna cried mercy, and then she put it in a figure-four leg-lock. Now all the turn signals work. On Monday, I came home from a meeting and went inside to check in. To the tune of every child’s anti-melody, I hear my son: “You are a stooormtrooooper, but where is your maaaask? The diiiiinasaurs are coming and they are so aaaaangry.” Then, from the window of Jonah’s room, I watched Grandmama pulling apart clumps of monkeygrass, planting each one in a row to border our front yard landscaping. This is too much. I leave Jonah to his time-defying musical and go grab my gloves. Together, Grandmama and I raked aside the old mulch. We spread out and cut the black mesh groundcover until we reached two old thorny bushes that Amy detests. I got out my shovel. About this time, my 5 year old boy bangs open the front screen door and carefully rushes down the porch stairs. He hollers, “Woah woah woah, dad! Wait for me!” In his raised right hand, I saw the the tiny orange shovel that came with his Home Depot tool set. Jonah, watching from his window, had seen me with my huge red shovel, and hatched a grand idea. He tiptoed through and still trampled over the monkey grass and planted his shovel in the dirt beside the thorny shrub. “Oh, that’s great, dad!” And one tiny scoop was partially displaced. This went on for one or two minutes, and then he found the scissors and began to trim the grass in the front yard. I finished pulling out the shrubbery, Grandmama and I spread out the mulch, and we were all finished in time for dinner. Later, this passing scene struck me as hugely significant. My son did not consider his own usefulness, rather, he was overcome with the desire to experience that moment with his dad. As an adult interacting with other adults, this kind of behavior would be entirely inappropriate. Mature human beings do not impulsively join others in any activity without some kind of preparation or self-awareness. But as a son interacting with his father, it doesn’t get any better, especially on those rare occasions when I see past the task at hand and enjoy my son regardless of his performance. There are people in my life who are supposed to love me no matter what. I want those people to care for me no matter how I act. If my actions need critiquing, I need to first know that I am loved. Not just nominally, but truly loved and accepted in that moment. Otherwise I am either crushed and defeated, or newly inspired to ramp up the effort to please. Both responses are evidence of a misunderstanding of the Gospel, but I reinforce that misunderstanding in my kids when I see their behavior first, and them second… which I am prone to do. Thank God for the faith and resilience of children!

I wrote a post a while back that never saw the light of day–and for good reason. It was written in a fit of depression as I tried to express my exhaustion with the burden of hope. In it I suggested that hope was something I didn’t want anymore.  In fact, I said that I wanted to crush it dead and rip it out of me. It took a while for me to realize that what I was really exhausted by wasn’t hope, it was myself. I have an ongoing struggle with trying to discern what God wants from what I want. You hear it all the time, people say, “If it’s God’s will, he’ll open a door.” The problem with that advice is that God isn’t the only one opening doors. I can open doors on my own and Satan certainly opens them all around me, all the time. It’s figuring out which one to walk through that is the problem. Quite a few times in my life I’ve tried to walk by faith and walked through an open door only to find a precipice waiting. I’m still bruised from those falls and these days I find it harder and harder to take those leaps of faith. I feel like I’ve trusted God and he’s let me down, let me fall. Why should I bother trusting him again? This week, over lunch, I discussed this with a wise, old friend of mine. How do I tell the difference between what God wants and what I want to see? He chewed his food and didn’t reply for a long time. I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me or not. Then he looked at me and said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” He shrugged, as if to imply that there was nothing more to be said. He was right. My first reaction was irritation, I hate having scripture quoted at me, but as I opened my mouth to offer my ‘yeah, but’, I realized that I had nowhere to go. The mistake I’ve made is trying to find a way to align what I want out of life with what God wants out of me. I have always tried to find a way to serve both desires but I can’t serve both God and myself and I’m sure that far too often I’ve ended up serving only the latter. My efforts to serve myself have been consistently confounded and in retrospect, I don’t know that I have ever sought the kingdom first. Therein lay the root of my depression. When I wrote that I wanted hope to die, what I was really trying to say was that I wanted my self-service to die. I want to be dead to my own desire and alive in God’s desire for me. That’s not an easy prayer. In fact, it’s damnably hard to pray that and mean it. But I pray it. If only by rote at times, I pray it. And my hope is that one day my desires and his will be one.

Recently I made the statement, “Our biggest sin as believers is ‘trying to do good” and ‘trying to be like Christ.'” What do I mean by that? Shouldn’t we try to be like Christ, and try to be good Christians? Romans 6-8 brings some background for my opening statement. Paul, in Romans 6, states our real identity in Christ. We died to sin (6:2). Our old self was crucified with Christ (6:6). We are no longer slaves of sin; we’re freed now from sin’s tyranny over us (6:6, 7, 18, 22). These are radical statements, but since this is now how God defines Reality we’re to count it as true (6:11). Well, first of all, what is sin? If we look at what righteousness is, it’s “Loving God and neighbor at the expense of oneself.” So, reverse that, and sin is “Loving oneself at the expense of God and neighbor.” We’re dead to that, Paul says, and so we’re to take that statement literally and count it as a foundational reality. Think for a moment of what that means: “I am dead to sin.” But – it’s not enough to know we are dead to sin, and Paul foreshadows Romans 7 in 6:14. Sin shall not be our master, because we are not under the Law, but under grace. What does “the Law” mean? Some say that Paul means the ceremonial Law, but when you get to 7:7 he uses “Do not covet,” straight out of the Ten Commandments, showing he is discussing not merely the ceremonial but the moral Law. If we look at the essence of the Law-based economy, it was “Do this and you shall be blessed – fail to keep the whole Law and be cursed.” It is an either-or proposition; either we succeed totally by our human effort and achieve blessing, or we make one mistake and we’re done for. Both Paul and James point to this principle: Gal. 5:3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. James 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. And 2Kings shows that the Law is all or nothing: 2Kings 21:8 I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their forefathers, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.” That’s the “if” of the Law. And in Deut 27:26 “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.” That’s the all of the Law. The Law is an “if” proposition. If you do A B and C, then you will be blessed. If you don’t do A, B, and C, then you will be cursed. The Law is about becoming Something through doing. It is God’s answer to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – Satan’s paradigm. With the Law, God said in effect, “OK, human beings. If you think you can know good and evil and be “like God,” here’s the standard. If you keep all these commands, I will bless you. If you break one, you are under a curse.” If we’d had the brains we’d have said at Sinai, “We can’t do all that! There’s no way!” But instead what was said was, “We will be careful to do all you have commanded.” No problem, Lord. We’ll just be like You. Got it.” And the Old Testament record shows how well that worked. The Law doesn’t work because only God is love; He’s the sole source of totally other-centered love in the universe. Human beings, in their own effort, cannot love in this way. This is why Paul says, “The Law was weak, through the flesh.” Flesh-effort cannot truly love as God loves. We can love those who love us. We can be kind to those who aren’t unkind to us. But only God Himself can say, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing” while being tortured and executed for crimes he didn’t commit; only God can make Corrie Ten Boom reach up years later and shake the hand of the Nazi guard who had caused her so much pain; only God can cause widows of missionaries to go into uncharted territory to find the natives who murdered their husbands and then love them into the Kingdom. That kind of love belongs only to God Himself, and moreover He doesn’t give this love to man as a thing to use; rather, God gives Himself to us as the driving force of love inside these earthen temples. That’s why our Law-based human effort doesn’t work. By human effort we cannot rise above our flesh tendencies, the desire for self-protection, self-preservation, self-love (which loves my family, my friends, my country), and love simply because we are love. Only God can do that. Oh, we can look pretty good. We can be religious, moral, live good lives, even die for our country. But we can’t die for those who are spitting, whipping, beating, crucifying us, Nazi guards and natives who murdered our husbands. That last bit is the measure of real love. Most Christians believe that the Law, fleshly effort, cannot save us. They know we need Jesus as our Savior. But how many realize, and I didn’t for many years, that Jesus Christ is also our sanctifier? “As you began in the Spirit (by relying on Jesus Christ) so walk in Him (by reliance on Christ, the Spirit in us).” And so the point of Romans 7 is to show the hamster-wheel struggle of a believer who tries to use human effort to “be like God” and keep the Law. It is a wheel with no end. The infinite intricacies of the Law knock us down again and again. “I hate what I’m doing! I’m not doing what I want to do!” And so Paul says, “All who rely on the Law are under the curse.” Why? Human-effort says, “I am not good as God is good, and must strive to become like God.” The lie of the Garden and Satan’s boast in Isaiah 14. Paul says, “When I will to do good (will-power), evil is present.” Will-power exertion to be ‘good’ produces wretched-man syndrome – the defeated Christian. And so Paul calls the Law, “the Law of sin and death” and “the ministration of condemnation” (2Cor 3:9). “Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” It’s a death-stage as we forever die to the illusion that we can be like Christ if we just try harder next time. But it’s an important stage; it is the stage by which we learn “I am not like God. I cannot be ‘like Christ.’ I’m as different from God as a light bulb is from electricity.” That’s the crucial thing to learn. As Paul put it, we are “vessels” and as Jesus said, “Branches.” There is no way for a cup itself to slake anyone’s thirst without something in it. There’s no way a branch can produce a single bit of fruit by exertion of effort. All the branch does is rest and stay connected to the Vine. That’s the foundational reality for the mature believer: “I am a cup.” “I am a branch.” It is the foundation of real humility, where we finally dispense with self-commendation when we do this or that good thing and self-condemnation when we fail. And so Jesus Himself, who set aside the use of His Deity and came to live here as a Holy Spirit-directed man knew this reality of human cup-ness and said, “I can do nothing of Myself” and “The Father in Me does the works.” In this humility – through the humiliation of our failure to be ‘like Christ’ – we find our true, inherent, God-created weakness. We were never meant to be good on our own steam, our effort, our striving. “Why do you call Me good? For there is only One who is good – that’s God.” That means there’s only one source of goodness in the entire universe, and it isn’t me, this human cup. To wrap this up, Romans 6 states we’re dead to sin. But a believer, dead to sin, cannot be a clear channel of God’s love unless he knows he’s also dead to striving, flesh-effort based, hamster-wheel-running ‘trying to be like Christ.’ That’s Romans 7. And I guess we can talk about Romans 8 after we finish discussion on this bit – 8, where the lie is conquered and we begin to see ourselves as weak in our humanity but strong in the Spirit.