What are you looking for?

One of my favorite things in the world is going to the art museum. It doesn’t really matter which one. They’re all wonderful. But the one I frequent is the Harn Art Museum in Gainesville, Florida. I love the quiet atmosphere, the open spaces, the slow pace, and the cute little old women that wander around smiling and randomly explaining the gallery pieces to anyone that looks particularly interested—or particularly confused. Part of me always cringes when I arrive with my small platoon of teenage boys. They don’t know to be quiet, or that they shouldn’t be smacking each other on the back of the head, or that they shouldn’t pick up that 12th century ritual dagger from dynastic China. Without fail, we always end up being watched closely by security. I don’t blame them. I’d watch us too. Regardless of which boys I take (the group is always different), they always end up divided into five different categories. The first is the boy that came on the field trip only because he thought he might be able to meet some girls and get some phone numbers. This type generally stands at the back of the group and attempts to look cool, a state attained by placing both hands in the pockets, but only just the fingertips, so the arms can sag and bow out and flop around. While the arms are thus engaged, the head must be tilted slightly forward so that one must raise the eyebrows to slowly look from one side to the other in a nonchalant manner, making certain never to actually look at any artwork. This boy generally does not participate in discussion and almost certainly will not be coming on the next trip to the museum. He also never meets any girls or gets any phone numbers. Not cool enough, I suspect. The second category is the “I could paint that” kid. This kid manifests himself most clearly in the modern and contemporary galleries. This boy believes that nothing short of photorealism is art, and of that which is photorealistic, only that which depicts things blowing up, things recently blown up, or things about to be blown up are really of any merit. This boy is also strangely silent when confronted with any art that depicts the female body and is given to much snickering at that which depicts the male. The third is the boy I call the ‘security monitor’. The security guards are going to get him and possibly us all, therefore he reports to me constantly of their whereabouts and actions. He also scopes the room for cameras, motion sensors, lasers, trip wires, ferocious watchdogs, and any skylights through which a swat team may rappel at any moment. All these things he keeps careful track of and protects us all and no amount of reassurance will persuade him that our imminent arrest may be all in his head. The fourth is a special case that must come in pairs. You see, this sort of boy requires another of the fourth category in order to manifest himself. When a pair is united they will giggle, smack each other, play tag, and hide around each corner in an attempt to scare the other. They must be shooshed, to which they will apologize and then look at each other sideways and begin to giggle quietly. Soon the giggling leads once more to the smacking, to the tagging and hiding, and eventually comes full circle again to the shooshing. This sort of boy requires much patience and rarely comes to the museum twice. Then the final category, that of the enlightened youth. This youth engages in discussion. He learns to look at things in new ways. He often surprises me with insight that even I had overlooked. This youth is the one that is actually cool (and the girls all know it.) This youth admonishes the others to be quiet and quit off their smacking and giggling. This youth rolls his eyes at the security monitor and assures him we will escape un-accosted. This youth is the reason that those of the other categories are tolerated. When he leaves the museum, his world is a bigger place, it looks different, it is full of possibilities. He says in his mind “I could paint that” and it is not an insult, it is an open door. This youth will return to the museum again, and again, and again, and not with me, but on his own and when he is a man he will smile at the kids there on the school field trip and the security monitors will report him as a spy. Maybe when he’s old he’ll even marry one of those cute old ladies. I’m so often surprised at which boys fall into which categories. Sometimes those that I’m sure will be the enlightened few end up being the ‘too cool’ ones and those that I’m sure will be the ‘I could paint that’ kind end up goggle-eyed over a Monet or they tour the entire gallery with one of the cute little ladies, hanging on her every word. Of only one thing am I ever certain when I take a group: the enlightened category will be the smallest. I wish it weren’t so, but it is the one constant, and that spark of knowledge, that thirst for understanding, that hunger for something other is so precious and so fragile that its value is beyond my ability to express with words. God bless those that are brave enough to see. They are too few and too far between.

I have a problem. Not that it is inherently harmful or detrimental or that it shall become your problem. It is certainly not a problem in the “please help me fix this” sense of the word, if you follow. It is more like a benign obsession. For books. Specifically, used books. I am newly addicted to used book stores. OK, I know exactly what you’re thinking: Boring. [Flip the channel]. I am currently sitting in the sunroom, of which there is plenty of sunshine this fine morning, of the McDaniels family, the kind and gracious folks who are hosting myself and eventually Randall Goodgame for our thus far tumultuous tour in eastern Nebraska, of which we have yet to play a single concert. Things already got off to a rocky start before either of us have played a single note (one last-minute show cancellation, one lost guitar). I’ll spare you the details. All I know is that I fell asleep last night to starlight clear skies, and I awoke this morning to iris-blue skies. But somewhere in the middle of dream’s proceedings it snowed. A lot. I can no longer make out the pavement of the street or any of the lawns in this quiet Lincoln neighborhood, occasionally littered with the cawing of crows or the blare of snowblowers. Atop the deck balcony, all piled in white shoulders, sits a good 2-3 inches of snow. It is a strange thing to wake up to, if you’re like me, an unaccustomed soul to the downpours of winter. It passed through the night, this visible ghost, unleashed its bravery, and ebbed away to some other unsuspecting land. I digress, snow does that to me. Now, back to my problem. At some point near about when the calendar conspired to 2008 I somehow morphed into a used bookstore hound. I am borderline obsessive about it. I suppose I should have seen it coming. My dear wife laughs at my preposterousness, but not fellow songwriter and friend, Andrew Peterson, who very nearly shares the same degree of passion and obsession and is quick to join me on used bookstore jaunts. It is good to have friends in your life who share and understand one’s own similar quirks and foibles. It has gotten to the point now where when I travel to far off cities, instead of searching for movie-plexes or malls I scour the yellow pages and internet for local used bookshops. I suppose this might be considered a good thing. I don’t know if it’s a newly-obtained old man tendency (of which I have quite a few) or if I have simply turned into someone worth ridiculing. All I know is that I am hooked to the point of obsessive-compulsion. I dream of, and wake up thinking about, used book stores. Like I said, I have a problem. It is the elusive hunt for those rare, personally treasured authors’ works which gets the antiquarian blood flowing and the heart palpitating much akin to the eager anticipation of seeing a loved one after a time apart. The thought of stumbling upon any work – specifically, first editions – by Frederick Buechner (always my first priority), Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, Kathleen Norris, J.B. Phillips along with a few others is enough to get the adrenaline pulsing and the heart rate up a notch or two. The outlandish beauty of such a search is that I never, ever know what I’m going to find in these papered stores, and that is exactly what I love about it, the impeccable unpredictability, and is what draws me in time and time again in city after city past shelf after ever-blessed shelf. I am coming to the not-so-well-defined conclusion that a truly great city should not necessarily be defined exclusively by its housing market, economy, mass transit system or other mind-numbingly boring sterile data, but also by the number and quality of used book stores which inhabit its incorporated borders. This may be a tad far-fetched for many of you, I realize, but, still, I can’t help but think there’s an inherently good quality to which a city, however large or small, affords the value of literature, to the written word, to the rare, collectible and unwanted. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Flea markets, antique stores, dumpsters and used book stores all have this in common. A quality used bookstore is a window into the heart and soul of a city. Just look on the shelves and you’ll see what people read (and discard), what is taken in, what is tossed out, and is very nearly a quiet and pensive pulse of its civilians. I mean, how can you NOT want to enter shops with alluring names like The Yellowed Pages, or BookMan BookWoman, or A Novel Idea, or my favorite in Nashville, the obvious, unglamorous and simply named Books? Yesterday at a great shop in downtown Lincoln, for example, I bought a first edition of Frederick Buechner’s Brendan. It is a book I never imagined I would ever happen upon, and yet there it was, its clean spine staring me in the bearded face. An audible “Oh my gosh” escaped my lips when I saw the book sitting on the ground-level shelf, apparently – obviously – awaiting my arrival. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting, my love. I am here now to rescue you from these dusty shelves and ces autre livres. Come and find peace, rest and admiration in the temple of my home.” Seeing this book on the shelf, I was beside myself in a near out-of-body experience; such is the degree of nerd-dom I have attained. There are far more dangerous obsessions in life, to be sure. I have a dream of building my Buechner collection of first editions of his entire authorial work. On the shelves they shall long rest, be read and perused, perhaps eventually one day to become my son’s treasured possessions as well. To pass on a love for the written word is my hope for him. Two final things worthy of mention: the generous McDaniel family loaned Randall and I one of their cars for the entire weekend. On the back windshield they created one of those stencil stickers that you see on car windows as advertisements. The one on this Honda reads, “Eric Peters Tour Vehicle. March 6-9, 2008. www.ericpeters.net”. Essentially, I am driving a car with my own name on it. I don’t know how I feel, or how I should feel, about that, but I figure if someone asks, I’ll just talk about myself in the third person: “Oh, he’s great if you like folk-pop singer-songwriters.” To wield such power. Last but not least, one of the McDaniel’s sons, whom I met years ago in my touring travels, is a professional mortician. Ironically, his name is the same as that of the aforementioned book I purchased. Brendan, the mortician. Brendan, the saint. Brendan, the McDaniel. To say that one is friends with a mortician – with no intended disrespect to either the living or the dead – is a mighty unique declaration.

Spring is coming to Tennessee. I made it home in time last night after band rehearsal to sit on an old bench in the woods behind my house and write for a spell, something that hasn’t happened for too long. I’ve been writing on the laptop so much lately that I’ve forgotten how good it is to feel the scratch of pen on paper, the rhythm of making the forms of letters and words rather than just pounding them out on a keyboard. Here’s what came out. I. Music filled the room just an hour ago. Five men, all bound by common purposes, Common needs, thinking, expressing a felt Remembrance, for a time, of the heart’s leap – That led us to commune with the Maker By making; we became younger, older, The moment expanding to encompass The wider, deeper world of which we sang. II. Now, after a short drive through smoke and noise, I am sitting on a wooden bench, hushed In the last light of the day, in silence That fades, as I wait, into another – Kind of music: the sound of birds calling, Brown leafless branches clicking together When a bird leaps and flaps away to nest Before a dark, long, and heavy silence – Takes its place over and among the woods. III. Can God be known here? Here in this wild place hemmed by highways, stitched with black powerlines, Defying what they call “development” And “progress” as the wet green fungus sighs – Over exposed bedrock; as bright new grass In tufts comes out of sleep and crowds the path I cut through the brambles? This place is mine And it is not mine. It is mine because – My name is on the deed. It is not mine Because a bank’s name is there beside it. Mine because I have loved it, if only For a year now, and yet not mine because – I did not, could not, make it, can’t keep it Alive or kill it, because it is ancient And it is a part of an earth that will Outlive me as I now live. A day comes – When I too will be ancient and holy, And this wild place, redeemed, will sing with me. It will belong, I will belong, fully, Joyfully, to him who set us both free. – The earth is the Lord’s, and all within it. IV. The resurrection and the life. Christ, whose Mind imagined and made the ground where now I sit, is as alive as the frogs chirping, Welcoming the night, singing in this way – Because they were made to make this music. The birds answer. The silence answers too: I find myself sinking down into it, Welcoming it, glad to have a good place – To sit, watch, listen, and to remember My place in the world, the woods, in my home. The sound of my eldest son’s voice calling “Papa!” echoes through the cedars and oaks. – “Time for dinner!” I turn, and can see light, Yellow in the warm windows, a glow that, Set against the blue dimness of nightfall, Makes me think of Heaven, and the best tales.

I don’t know how realistic it is, but I’m going to try and keep a video blog of the Resurrection Letters Tour this month. Here’s a clip of Andy Gullahorn, Gabe Scott and myself working out the finer points of an instrumental arrangement of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”. Like I said, nothing much happens. But it’s a start.

“Make that chicken as big as the paper will let you,” urged Miss Coates, “and remember that your audience needs bold, full color, hefty size, and strongly drawn lines to be able to clearly see these marvelous players of the play which you are creating!” It was puppet show week, and Ms. Smith’s class was planning to perform Beauty and the Beaks. Joe was busy coloring the wall-eyed farmer’s overalls a lovely flesh color, Gordon was busy cutting blue fabric “jeans” to glue on to his character’s stubby legs, and Chloe was decking out her hen with long eyelashes, a lovely skirt, and all the feathery finery. Hayden, one of the most enthusiastic gals in the class when it came to art, was fearlessly charging ahead with her representation of one of the story’s beauty shop regulars, Hattie the Hen. Hayden had a habit of walking up to the “Private Territory of Miss Coates” (otherwise known as her desk) upon which children had to knock if they wished to enter. (There has to be some space that’s sacred and untouched by little hands.) “Knock, knock!” came the squeaky little voice. “Come in!” Miss Coates welcomed her, and her light blue eyes and freckled, rosy face shone. Hayden launched into the continuing saga of the arts and crafts time that they have at her house, hemming and hawing and all but twirling her hair and tapping her toes with a sweet grin about the fact that they were about to turn their playroom into an art studio, “painting the walls and everything!” She giddily skipped to her table and planned out her chicken’s outfit, then set to work in her blue apron, armed with a tray of well-loved oil pastels. Meanwhile, Miss Coates was about the business of assisting with the attachment of feathers, troubleshooting how to make a smile look more like a frown (the farmer’s wife wasn’t supposed to be happy!), and catching a handful of tears that fell from the frustration of not knowing how to draw a dress on a chicken. (I mean, who can blame her?) Oil pastels were steadily being rubbed down to the nubs, scissors were clipping, paper was flying, lines were being practiced, paint stir sticks were being taped to the backs of the little puppet bodies, and no one had fallen apart….yet. Upon visiting the table nearest her desk, the table where Hayden McGuffin sat, tongue-stuck-out, deep in concentration over her chicken’s finely designed threads, Miss Coates noticed that Hattie had a lovely tank top, bows in her feathers, a flouncy little skirt and even purple boots! But sticking out of those boots were tiny little, well, chicken legs, and where the wings should have been were the same sort of chicken-leggish “arms.” Sacré Bleu! Hattie was just too skinny. None of the parents would be able to see her from all the way in the back of the lunchroom, and then there were the grandparents with their failing eyesight. This wasn’t good. A fix had to be had. But how? Hayden had almost completed her puppet with such pride, and Miss Coates was terrified of what this might do to the young artist’s self esteem. “Um, Hayden, let’s talk about your puppet,” she began with fear and trembling, “Do you think that the audience will be able to see those tiny little legs and eyes and that itty-bitty beak?” “Well, no….I guess not…” “Then how about we turn it over and I help you draw a nice big fat new chicken?” Silence. Sniffle number one. (Oh no.) Sniffle number two. (I’m a murderer.) Then came the full-fledged folded-arms-and-head-on-table and the high whine of a cry’s beginning. (I should be shot. Or hanged. Shot in the knee and then hanged.) No words could adequately encompass Miss Coates’ back-peddling at this point, or how deeply each little “sniff, sniff” rang in her ears. Rising above the emotional din, however, she steadfastly, and with a few little warm rubs on Hayden’s back, helped her draw the outline of a new, fuller-figured chicken and assured her that this chicken, too, could have such a fine looking outfit as the skinny one had worn. As they worked together, other children heard her sighs of sadness and gathered ’round to cheer and encourage. As the new chicken took shape, Hayden’s eyes brightened, her sniffles came at lesser intervals, and she even chuckled when Miss Coates tried to make a lame joke about the purple boots. When she was finished designing and coloring and after she had cut out the large shape, the class decided together that it was a far more successful chicken. Her smile finally emerged. Miss Coates still felt like the biggest puppy-killer/tricycle-tire-slasher/balloon-popper on the planet. She was just sure, though, that for Hayden to have a successful chicken puppet, some changes had to be made. She recalled moments of her own childhood (and adult life too) where she had needed to be redirected, turned around and smacked gently on the rear. As she sent the class out the door, swept oil pastel crumbs into her hands and washed the tables, she paused and said a prayer of thanksgiving for these “grown-ups” who had loved her so entirely, then chuckled and sighed at the thought that she was now one of the very same, herself.

I took a break from teaching today and had a chance to sit back. It’s nice for a time such as this and our guest speaker, Beth, did something quite different from the norm. Set up front was a potter’s wheel and all accompanying materials – a bowl of water, tools for scraping and shaping, a towel and more – and she was prepared to speak on the obvious subject ahead. I was surprised how moved I was with all of this. After all, it’s almost as if you knew the whole sermon before she started – how many places can you really go with the potter-and-clay analogy, right? She spoke as she threw (not literally throwing things across the room, but the proper terminology for shaping and molding that which is in the potter’s hands), building proper tension at all the right times. It was beautiful in its presentation but also in its truth. She would explain what she was doing to the clay and then tell her own life story, jumping back and forth. And at one point, she said, “You can’t tell, but I’m placing a tremendous amount of pressure right now to get the clay to move where I need it to move.” That was it for me. That was my highlight, of sorts, to take home. I find myself always attempting to wiggle out of moments that are the pressurized. I guess that’s human nature, but it doesn’t make it right. Stay informed and be aware of the risks. The first step towards a more prepared future is to research and educate yourself. At timetoprepare.net , we provide the most updated articles on survival and emergency preparedness. These articles are written by experts in the fields of survival, emergency preparedness, and emergency management, so that you can be sure that you are getting the best information available. You can also get quick tips when there’s no time to read an entire article. Just go to our quick tips page to get short, actionable steps you can take immediately. Coming up in our communal living scenario, we are facing a time this summer in which we know many changes will take place and it’s something we’re desperately working to avoid – keep things as stable as we can so we don’t encounter too much friction, worry or nervousness. My entire history is like that – in moments of financial pressure, relational pressure, etc. – my tendency is to collapse beneath it all, unwilling to allow myself to take the shape I am intended to. And then I wonder why again and again, I am forced to go through the same thing. It’s obvious that I am supposed to do something different yet I consistently run from that which God wants to do in my own life. Trust. Patience. Endurance. I was late to the character party. I was almost 30 when I married and for good reason – I wasn’t close to ready before then. I was a complete jerk to a number of girls I dated through my teens and twenties and there are various moments I can look back and see where pressure began to build and I would run. Same thing in my jobs and it took a complete collapse and depression to make me see that I continued to sacrifice my character and integrity just to escape things I didn’t want to go through. Now? I hope I’m different, but I know what I am capable of. I’ve also seen the beauty that comes in allowing yourself to be thrown by the one who created all things. It hurts like hell sometimes, but the process is always worth it.

There is a rare joy that comes from discovering a treasure of a book that you’re sure few have ever heard about. It’s like you’re in on a delicious little secret, and it makes a good book even better. It feels like it is increasingly difficult to find these rare gems, and once you do, you become a sort of evangelist, telling everyone who will listen: “You gotta read this!” That’s what happened to me when I discovered the fiction of Russell Kirk. I first mentioned him here in the rabbit room on Halloween when I posted my review of his book of ghostly tales, Ancestral Shadows. A devout Christian man, Kirk was described by both Time and Newsweek as one of America’s leading thinkers and is widely regarded as the father of the modern conservative movement, having written many political essays and books that have helped to shape America, the best known among these being The Conservative Mind. Among other things, he is also the only American to hold the highest arts degree (earned) of the senior Scottish university—doctor of letters of St. Andrews. Well, if this all sounds boring to you, just wait. You see, in his spare time Kirk would put his considerable powers of erudition to the task of writing ghostly tales and thrillers for his own enjoyment and as experiments in “recovering the moral imagination.” His work is similar to Tolkien, Lewis, and G.K. Chesterton in that there are deep convictions and a theology guiding his stories. These deep moorings both anchor his work and give it wings. I’m not one to usually read ghost tales, but with Kirk there is the assurance that he isn’t going to take you anyplace that will leave you feeling sullied or demonized. Make no mistake, his stories are delightfully chilling, but they play out in a very moral universe and testify to redemption, retribution, and hope. After reading Ancestral Shadows, I was happy to discover Old House Of Fear – a novel that outsold all his other books combined. Old House Of Fear is a gothic romance that follows the adventure of Lawyer Hugh Logan who leaves Michigan on an errand for his Scots-born industrialist friend Duncan MacAskival to purchase from a Lady MacAskival the Island of Carnglass in the Hebrides off of Scotland and the Old House of Fear which is perched there. It’s not long before Logan encounters dangerous interference making it clear that there is more to this business in Carnglass than meets the eye. With its heavy mists, unyielding cliff walls, and a deadly reef of “needles” surrounding it, the island is as forbidding as it is remote. After overcoming incredible odds to merely reach the island, the worst still lay ahead for Logan as he discovers that the island and Lady MacAskival are now under the control of a kind of Marxist warlock named Dr. Jackman – an extremist political refugee and evil genius with “a third eye” in the middle of his forehead, a scar from a war wound that ought to have taken his life. It’s soon clear that Jackman has dark plans for The Old House Of Fear and it’s inhabitants, including the captive young Mary MacAskival. On one level, this is just a rousing thrill of a little book, but it’s also more than that if you care to dig deeper. “What Kirk has actually achieved is a political morality tale. For all the apparent ectoplasm floating about it, the Old House of Fear is haunted not by ghosts but by the shadow of the welfare state,” wrote Time in 1960. The good news is that the book never feels like it has an agenda and like the best of G.K. Chesterton’s novels is just an exciting tale well told. If you’re in the mood for a thrilling mystery set on a misty Scottish Island in an imposing castle where bogles may roam the corridors, haunted eyes gleam in the dark, trap doors beneath the cellar give way to curiously deformed skeletons, and theatrical baddies hatch diabolical plans while an unlikely hero and heroine (did I fail to mention that this is in part a love story as well?) try to thwart their plot before perishing on the island, then Old House Of Fear is for you. It’s also a book that is as intelligent as it is entertaining, offering a “microcosm of modern existence” as it pits the philosophies of its chief characters against each other. Oh yeah, and it’s just good clean fun, too. C’mon, give it a chance – and then let me know what you think of it!

I’ve only read pieces of a few of Peterson’s books, but it’s enough for me to know that he’s an admirable thinker and writer. Several years ago I had the honor of performing at the book release of The Message, in Anaheim, California, and was disappointed to learn that my fellow Peterson (no relation, of course) wouldn’t be there. how to take fake id photo. That he chose to stay at home with his wife in Montana rather than attend the big hoo-hah of such an impressive, difficult work increased my appreciation of the man. My friend Ben May sent me the following link to an interview with Peterson, in which I became an even bigger fan at the mention of Wendell Berry, who is perhaps my favorite living author. After seeing this, I’d love to know which Eugene Peterson books you would recommend to a newbie like myself.

Since nobody here has weighed in yet on the passing of Larry Norman, I thought I would post some thoughts. Interestingly (perhaps only to me) I felt reticent about discussing Larry Norman here, wondering if his work would be considered relevant to the rabbit room culture. But as I’ve been slaving over a piece about Mark Heard I hope to post soon, I realized that I only know of Mark Heard because I discovered him through Larry Norman. The same is true of Randy Stonehill, whose records I learned how to play guitar to. I discovered Rich Mullins because I heard he played the hammered dulcimer, an instrument I fell in love with on Mark Heard’s records. Later, I fell in love with Andrew Peterson’s music because he reminded me of Rich Mullin’s. I eventually became friends with Andrew, and there you have it: I’m a part of the rabbit room because of Larry Norman. As I reflect on Larry Norman’s life and work, I’m beginning to realize that I may be deeply indebted to him for so much of what my life looks like now. For the uninitiated, Larry Norman is widely regarded as the first Christian rock artist. While some like to debate this, it’s undeniable that Norman galvanized and became the poster child of a generation passionate to make their faith relevant to their culture. Leading the charge to “sing a new song” was Larry Norman, who appears to have just made things up as he went along and in the process – without any kind of CCM industry to bully him and censor what he was doing – made compelling, utterly original music, some of which is still scandalous to timid Christian ears more than 30 years later. He re-imagined Jesus as an outlaw with a group of “unschooled ruffians” as his followers, and later compared him to an UFO in his second coming. He fearlessly addressed the fruitless attempts of 60’s & 70’s culture to fill their God-shaped hole with sex in lyrics like “Gonorrhea on Valentine’s Day, but you’re still looking for the perfect lay…” (from Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus?) His songs intelligently employed social, cultural, and philosophical commentary. And he was really funny. He also looked and acted like a legitimate rock star and his music never sounded “Christian” in the worst sense since he wasn’t making it for a Christian market. It could be said that we haven’t seen a Christian artist since who was as relevant to his culture, perhaps with the exception of Derek Webb. A mythology grew up around Norman as stories of his adventures seeded and took root, like how he and a friend would solicit prostitutes in order to share the gospel with them (without, of course, taking advantage of their services). He kept company with cultural icons both secular (Paul McCartney) and spiritual (Malcolm Muggeridge), and stories of how he led Randy Stonehill to Christ and nurtured Keith Green further established him as a cultural icon in his own right. And perhaps nobody was better at fostering this mythology than Norman himself with his enigmatic, radical, and compelling persona. I discovered Larry Norman’s music through my youth pastor and found in him an artist whose work challenged my timorous notions of Christianity. He seemed like a firebrand and inspired me to a more genuine evangelical ideal. His was the music of the street and steered clear of church speak. Norman inspired me to take the gospel beyond the church walls and thus the first concert I ever performed was at the local coffee-shop that was owned by two lesbians and frequented by a decidedly unchurched crowd. In fact, I played “The Outlaw” there that first night. Larry Norman’s work helped to shape my worldview as a young Christian, and much of the way I see ministry today I still owe to him. The first Christian rock concert I ever saw that I really cared about was when my youth pastor Dave Flavin took me up to The New Union in Minneapolis to see Larry Norman (The opening act was an up and coming local band called PFR!). Norman was already almost unbearably odd by then and rumors of tensions between him and Randy Stonehill, Daniel Amos, and the other artists he worked with had begun to sully the Larry Norman experience. And yet I hung on his every word, mesmerized. And when he sang “Messiah” I was surprised that Jesus hadn’t come back at that very moment. For years I was an avid collector of Norman’s music, tracking down long out of print records and videos. My biggest score was when I managed to get my hands on Norman’s very rare album, “The Son Worshipers” which at the time was valued at more than $300. I eventually traded it for two items I still have to this day: Mark Heard’s first record (infinity + 3) and one of the only VHS copies of Heard’s last performance at Cornerstone after which he had the heart attack that would eventually take his life. And this is how my passion for all things Norman began to wane. I felt like I outgrew him and got weary of all the controversy surrounding his personal life. I became suspicious of his quirky antics and my attention turned instead to less sensational artists and thinkers like Mark Heard, The Vigilantes of Love, and Frederick Buechner. Larry Norman passed away at the age of 60 on February 24th 2008. When I read the news, I was filled with nostalgia for the season of my life where the sun rose and set on this idiosyncratic and mercurial figure. As I revisited some of his music, I was glad to find how well it holds up. Though a bit dated – Norman was a man of his times, to be sure – the songs still strike me as relevant. I think this is because embedded in the DNA of his work is this reckless desire to bring the gospel to bear upon the world as he knew it. Whatever you want to say about Larry Norman, I think it can be argued that he never compromised his convictions of making music from his gut, music that was relevant at the street level. Though overshadowed by controversy and what looked to some like a slow descent into a kind of theatrical psychosis, (even in his death, one Norman biographer admits that if he heard that Norman had faked his passing and was now living out his final years in Thailand, he wouldn’t be altogether surprised), Larry Norman’s contribution cannot be dismissed. In my own life, it’s clear to me now that it was Larry Norman’s work that first woke me out of the stupor of facile Christianity and stirred an insatiable appetite in me for art, thought, and faith expression that was original, intelligent, and genuinely evangelistic. Larry challenged me to stop playing church and look outward with my faith and he asked me to want more than the status quo from my Christianity, and I haven’t been satisfied since. For more on Larry Norman: www.larrynorman.com Recommended: Only Visiting This Planet (produced by the Beatle’s George Martin and consistently listed as one of the most seminal albums in Christian music.) Available at: larrynorman.com Youtube clips: Great American Novel The Tune The Outlaw Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus?

I’m afraid of you. And I hate to admit it. I was just talking about this concept earlier today. I’ve been teaching each Sunday morning for the past (nearly) four years within the church we started in that course of time. And some people from our church community and I were discussing that, in those early days of the first year, there was a boldness and confidence (authority, even?) in what I would say compared to today. Today is much different. Over the past few months, I’ve begun to ask “Is everyone with me?” or “Are you tracking with this?” I’ve become leery of saying certain things in fear that someone might disagree, sorry to say, and uncomfortable in my own skin as someone called to speak truth to the culture around me. I hate this. I feel it as soon as I ask it on a Sunday – the inner feeling of self-doubt and the verbal asking for some sort of security or validation. I might as well just interrupt the sermon with, “Do you still like me? Please don’t turn me off! I’m still a good guy. Anyone?” I ran across a quote courtesy of Jeffrey Overstreet which I am including below which speaks to this and I immediately thought of my own insecurities and missing those days when I was a little less concerned about how I would come across and more concerned about the truth I needed to proclaim: “Catering to fears of being misunderstood leaves you dependent upon your audience. In the simplest yet most daring scenario, ideas are diluted to what you imagine your audience can imagine, leading to work that is condescending, arrogant, or both. Worse yet, you discard your own highest vision in the process.” – Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland I think this is true no matter if you are a painter, songwriter, storyteller, speaker, plumber, musician, salesman or cubicle-ite. There’s something that dies within us the moment we begin to think in terms of palatability for the audience – from the art we create to our Christian witness. Something within my own spirit dies when I reduce truth to something the audience wants to hear. Something within our own creativity dies when we edit the story or the song for a radio structure or store placement. At the very least, I find it true for me. I need to forget any other audience and be true only to the greatest audience of one. At least, I think so. Right? Anyone with me?

Lost, oh how I love thee! Did you see last week’s episode? Wow, what a perfect example of why this show is the best thing on TV. Lost is actually the only reason I subscribe to a television service (I can’t get broadcast reception where I live.) I hadn’t paid for cable or bothered watching anything but movies for ages until one day a few years ago I rented and watched the first season of Lost. Hook, line and sinker. Gulp. Three years later it’s still reeling me in. One of my favorite things about it is that it represents a return to what had almost become a lost art: mise en scene. For those that didn’t go to film school that’s the term for the way the information within the frame conveys the story. Hitchcock and Welles were masters of this. Everything you see in the frame of a Hitchcock film is there for a reason. The stuffed bird on the wall, the medicine bottle on the nightstand, the dog barking in the background, it’s not random, it presents information about the story, the character, the scene. Modern cinema has largely lost this discipline. Lost has found it. The article on the newspaper is a clue. The reporter on the TV in the background is telling us something. The advertisement on that bus that just passed? It was an anagram. The show is brilliant and I can’t imagine what a blast it must be to write for it. Another thing that keeps me in love with it is that it dares to present philosophy on primetime TV and makes it intoxicating. Hume, Locke, Rousseau: for a lot of people these names don’t mean anything, but for those that recognize them, it’s magnificent. Faith vs. Science. Fate vs. Freewill. John Locke vs. Jack Shepard. This is great stuff and what’s best is that it’s done without muddying up the story. Character and Story are king here, not philosophy and agenda. So even if you don’t care a whit for the deeper issues, at least you won’t notice them getting in the way while you enjoy the ride. One last reason why everyone should watch Lost: Characters. The creators have never lost sight of the fact that without flawed, believable characters, the story doesn’t matter. There is a character here for everyone to love and everyone to hate, and the genius of it is that those characters are different for each viewer. Some people love Sawyer and hate Jack. Some hate Locke and love Jack. Some even loved Charlie (I did) while everyone loves to hate Ben. And Desmond, come on brotha, who couldn’t love Desmond! The call to Penny last week made me whimper and sniffle like a housewife with a Harlequin. So if you haven’t gotten on board the plane yet, do so.And for heaven’s sake, don’t start watching in the middle, you must, must, MUST begin with season one: episode one and watch it in order from the beginning.If you don’t, you’ll be confused, bored, and utterly and completely…lost. Yes, I know that was lame.

Tuesday night my wife and I watched American Idol on our DVR. We fast-forwarded full speed through the commercials and Ryan Seacrest’s Mary Poppins perfect delivery, and wondered aloud how all that fast motion might be re-wiring our brains. The performances ranged from forgettable to uber-cheesy to impressive, which seems about right with 20 people still left in the competition. Then, for the finale, seventeen year old David Archuleta of Utah walked out to sing the last verse and chorus of John Lennon’s Imagine. I did not expect to be moved. I watch American Idol, but I mock American Idol. We love Kelly Clarkson in our house, but we don’t take her seriously. And then, this unassuming and very normal, smiley young man asks me to imagine no possessions, doubting that I can. He’s 17, singing about the brotherhood of man, and I am weeping, gaping at the television. In the beautiful, Oscar winning animated film, Ratatouille, the climax of the film occurs as the uppity and aptly named food critic, Anton Ego, tastes Remy’s entree. Ego’s reaction to his first bite is the stuff of movie legend. The beauty of the moment was not that a rat could actually cook. The beauty of the moment was that food could do that to somebody. In Tuesday’s American Idol, the earlier contestants came out bouncing and shaking and strumming and belting. The band rocked, even if some of the songs and performances were lame. Then little Mr. Archuleta walked out to one band dude strumming one acoustic guitar. Maybe there were some keyboard pads that filled in as the song went along, but it was far and away the smallest song of the night. And it was by far the biggest. His voice captured my attention immediately. After the first phrase, Amy and I shared a glance that said, “??!?!?!” and after he finished singing with control and phrasing and maturity way beyond his years, and the judges agreed with our assessment, we rewound and watched that clip over and over. We were giddy, and tearful… stunned to feel so moved. You will hear the name David Archuleta again. I’m sure he will do some cheesy songs over the next few weeks, but I’m also certain that he will win. More importantly, I am pleased to be healed of a bit of ‘Ranton Ego’. For even in the glare of commercial juggernaut, American Idol, I am reminded that “a great artist can come from anywhere.”

I am unsettled today. Between the pauses in snowfall, briskly three-dimensional and aloof, I sense a strange lag inside my own skin. Just now, I feel foreign to my space in the world. I am weary of winter and the gray concoctions that inhabit seemingly every second. I find myself longing for more than just the temporal warmth and spring and rebirth of earth and its mavens. The snow is blowing parallel to the ground, north to south, and is as dense as I’ve ever seen in these southern United States. The only green color within my vantage point is the small cluster of longleaf pines across the avenue, now hosting small pockets of cold. I find myself longing for more than these slow, sublime, occasionally frustrating days I lead, longing toward peace and rest, longing away from here and now, away from encumbered toil and aimless labors. Just outside the coffee shop window, a man is digging at the ground, shoveling away mud and dirt from a trench. The paved concrete has been ripped away, surely the result of a busted water pipe, revealing long-hidden and compacted soil and a slow trickle of water. All the while snow floats about, coating the worker and his tools in a baptism of sorts. The pines collect it in their tendrils. It stockpiles atop cars. The earth tends to take such reckless actions. The world is, after all, subject to heaven from whence originates its own christening. Occasionally, I take notice of such occurrences of blessing being bestowed upon the most unlikely subjects. To see it inside a religious sanctuary is one thing altogether expected, but to witness it on the urban concrete of the city is quite another, rather unexpected and most welcome. Sun shimmering through the parted clouds, humanity wheeling and whirling about, the wet painting of falling snow and rain: all the Good and Remembering grace. I would wish to be settled, to be at peace with this skin I am given, to pause and recognize that my being foreign to this world is not necessarily all that terrible a thing. For however long I yearn for tomorrow, however deeply I long for rebirth, however fearful or comfortable I am with myself is, in some small measure, an entrenched and guttural hope that God continues to prepare a place at his festival table for the slow and peculiar creatures we are, and the blessings we both unknowingly bestow and undeservedly receive amid all our faith and lack thereof.

Isaiah 50:10-11, “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.” “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.” These verses are to believers, those who fear the Lord and obey the voice of God’s servant but who are currently walking in a dark place with no light. Trusting the nature of God and leaning, staying ourselves upon our God, is the way through. But we sometimes cut and run in those dark places. We warm ourselves by the fires of our own effort, thinking we’re going to find our way through by the works of our own hands. We think it through; we plan. We fool ourselves into thinking we’re doing the right thing. Abraham and Sarah used Hagar to produce Ishmael. Saul, thinking he knew better, disobeyed God’s command. Peter’s fleshly presumption, “I will never deny you,” resulted in his running away when the heat turned up; he warmed his hands at a unbelieving fire kindled by fleshly effort, and ultimately denied the Lord. “Walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.” In other words, “If you’re not going to rely on Me, trust My nature, to be still and know that I am God, then go ahead and do it your way.” And again, Peter cutting and running when the legalists, “the men from James,” showed up. He tried to do things his way, and Paul was the man who stood on God’s Word. The result of this self-effort? Abraham’s sorrow in having to send Ishmael away. Saul losing the kingdom. David and Bathsheba losing their baby. Peter sobbing bitter tears at his own betrayal of Jesus, and, later, the public put-down of his hypocrisy by Paul in Galatians. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow. How many times have I laid down in sorrow because of trying to manipulate my circumstances, or things, or people, to produce the desired “blessed” life? The answer to all this sorrow and shame? In contrast, we have the fire kindled by Jesus in John 21:9. The wet, cold, betrayer Peter warming himself by Jesus’ fire, contrasting with his former denials by the fire of man’s approval. Jesus’ fire, a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Revelation. Love. Desire. Passion. “Heart of my own heart, whatever befall.” That’s the Fire we’re to rely on. An inner Fire kindled by God’s own hand. So instead of trusting our own ways, our own thoughts, our own puny sparks and fire, we trust God. We stay ourselves upon the Lord, relying on His Word, no matter what our thoughts, our emotions, our circumstances, our friends, our enemies, the devil, or the world tells us what to do. “Be still, and know that I am God.” In every situation we make a choice: Is God truthful and faithful and trustworthy? Or is He a liar, unfaithful, and not to be trusted? The fire of fleshly effort leads to sorrow. God’s fire leads to a fruitful life and “Well done, good and faithful servant.” “He that is not with me is against me.” It’s an either-or choice. There’s no in-between.

In Rainbows was it for me. The (over)hyped release of Radiohead’s latest masterpiece was so far beyond any other release I heard last year that I dubbed it #1 on the Top Ten I had to write for several publications. In fact, it wasn’t even close. It was numbers 2-9 that took me significant time to develop because Radiohead was such a no-brainer. But really there’s a great question to be asked: Why? All Music Guide suggests there are between 500-700 releases per month and that doesn’t include all the little guys who will never be known outside of their mom enjoying the new EP. And in that sea of music, Radiohead was by far the most celebrated release of last year by most media outlets. So again, the question is “Why?” Thom Yorke and company create music that definitely isn’t radio friendly, with hooks just out of reach and complexities that baffle at times. Yorke’s lyrics are hardly the stuff of love and life, so it’s not that everyone is relating to some great line. The guys really aren’t press hounds either, so it’s not as if they are thrust into the limelight all the time, reminding everyone of their greatness (although their freelease certainly had the lion’s share of music publicity for months). So it’s not lyrics. Not accessibility. Not radio overload. And not likeable, press-friendly personalities. What is it about this collection of songs that made everyone drop what they were doing and turn up the music? I’m not even going to attempt to answer at this point without some comments because I’m legitimately interested in hearing straight answers to the questions.

One sweet day I’m going to have a lot of friends who are literary agents and I’m going to make them send me specifically formatted letters every time they want to speak to me or ask to borrow my bundt pan. Of course I will then reply to said letters with an across the board answer of “Sorry, I’m almost in love with this idea but can’t quite commit. I’m sure someone else will adore it.” Can I just say that this weekend has been a perfect reinforcement of the title of this post? As I said I would in the last post, I tweaked a few things in my query letter until I was happy with it. Then I spent the last week or so doing another complete edit of the manuscript and there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s much stronger for it.So today I sat down and started sending out some queries.You might venture to think this is easy. You’d be wrong.Every agent has their own foibles, each wanting things done just a little differently.The result is that each submission winds up being a long process of putting together a list of specific materials and arranging them just so in order not to be rejected outright by getting the format wrong.Some people want just the query, some want the query and the first ten pages, some want me to add a two-page synopsis to that, some a one page synopsis and a description of how I intend to promote the book, the list of possible combinations is endless. One even required me to submit my favorite sentence from the manuscript. Say what? I kid you not. Out of a hundred thousand words, each and every one of which is near and dear to my heart, this person requires me to choose my very favorites. Talk about an agonizing decision. Ugh. I hope I get to meet that particular agent one day. I will throttle her (unless of course she sells my book). By the time my mind was completely frazzled, I had sent out a whopping nine submissions. The first and third had already been rejected by the time the ninth was submitted. On the plus side, neither rejection was a form letter, though one did leave me with the distinct impression that she hadn’t read past the first sentence, so bizarre was her reply. For me the worst part of being rejected is looking at an agent’s list of sales. While they certainly have one or two that are good (or I wouldn’t be considering them), they also seem to have sold a glut of worthless dreck, often things as revolting as vampire romance novels or some tired old fantasy retread. I know this sort of stuff sells (though I do wonder to whom) and agents rely on hack writers to pay the bills but it’s just really painful to know that somewhere out there is a book about an angst-ridden urban vampire and his emo girlfriend that got picked over mine. I imagine it’s the exact same feeling the musicians here at the Rabbit Room get every time they hear a Britney Spears song. Oh joy, just got another rejection as I was writing that last paragraph. I intend to do at least a few submissions every day this week. We’ll see how it goes.

“I think writers with actual intentions generally end up saying things they already thought they knew, and I’m not much interested in reducing my vocation as a poet to something like propagandist. I write poems to find things out, not to communicate some previously ossified conclusion.” -poet Scott Cairns in an interview with Image Most of my recent posts have to do with various things we can wrestle with as artists and creators. I ran across this quote from Cairns and it evoked a puzzled response more than anything. I can read his quote and think, “Absolutely! Screw propaganda and allow the creativity to flow.” He makes the journey sound beautiful, and yet… I feel like many musicians and writers do have that intent in mind. They do have something specific to communicate and the end goal already figured out. And I’m sure sometimes they might deviate from that – as they get going, they realize their creativity is a forceful river unto itself, eroding the banks and rushing over land into a new path. But I know that others begin and end with the same conclusion, starting with The End in mind and moving there without distraction. And I still feel like it’s good art. Am I mistaken? Of course, Scott Cairns is not infallible so perhaps that’s not a blanket statement he made. But what is the tension? What is proper goal-setting for the artist and what is too much predetermination? I’d love to hear from both the artist and the patron on this, because I feel like, as a patron of much, that I can sniff out the rat of propaganda and I hate it. Then again, I can recognize the tension of needing to go somewhere as well. So have you wrestled with this before? Where did you end up? Did you err on one side or the other?

“You can say it’s my job to fight [evil] but I don’t know what it is anymore. More than that, I don’t want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I’ll be part of this world.” So muses Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) in the opening of No Country for Old Men. I saw the film a week ago and I still can’t stop thinking about it. It does little for me to say that it’s a good movie–anyone knows that by now–but it’s the type of film that divides people and provokes differing interpretations and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts. I’m not going to dance around spoilers here. If you haven’t seen it or don’t want anything spoiled, you might want to skip this post. Clearly, the film is interested in the nature of evil and interesting to me is that the evil presented in the character of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) isn’t insane, senseless, or random. It is disciplined, calculated, almost moral. Anton is nearly incapable of acting without purpose; if he kills someone it is, to him, necessary. And when his reasons aren’t clear to him, the device of the coin toss relieves him of having to make his own choice. He is only able to do the things he does because he has an inner set of guidelines that not only direct him but allow him to avoid responsibility for his actions and maintain a clear conscience. The scene near the end when he confronts Mrs. Moss is the only time in the film he shows anger, and it’s because she refuses to call the coin toss, refuses to let him place responsibility anywhere other than himself. And having broken his own moral code by killing her, what goes around finally begins to come around when he’s hit by the car. What is so disturbing about this depiction of evil is that we often comfort ourselves by thinking that evil is dumb or random, when the truth is that evil knows exactly what it’s doing, evil thinks it is righteousness, and evil has been getting away with it for far longer than we’ve been around to figure it out. It’s scary to realize that we might not be the ones that are a step ahead. As Tommy Lee Jones’s character says, trying to understand the evil that’s out there will put your ‘soul at hazard’. Confronting evil, trying to get in its head and master it is dangerous and a man might not come out the winner, not in this life and perhaps not in the next. This brings me to the hotly debated ending of the movie. Jones’s character, speaking to his wife, tells of a dream in which he and his father are riding horseback through the mountains at night “like in old times” and his father has lit a flame in a horn and rides off ahead of him into the darkness to ready a fire and wait for him. “And then I woke up,” says Jones’s character, and the film cuts to black, it’s over, and we’re the ones in the darkness. After a week of mulling over that ending, I still love it, I think it’s perfect, but I still wonder exactly what it means. Is it hopeful, or hopelessly bleak? I tend to think that somewhere out in all the dark of the world, my Father is preparing a fire and waiting for me gather myself out of the night and rest. The central question of the film is this, I think. Is that fire a dream from which we must all wake, or a prophecy in which we find hope? No matter which way you interpret that, it is a brilliant question to ponder as you leave a theater. I think for the first time in quite a few years, I actually care who wins the Best Picture Oscar. After finally having seen all the contenders, I think only No Country for Old Men and Michael Clayton are left in the ring and of those two, No Country for Old Men is the one that is a movie for the ages. Film students will still be studying this one when we’re all old men. I’d love to read some other peoples’ thoughts.

Through a glorious but all too brief break in the typical winter weather pattern here in middle Tennessee, I took my family to the Nashville Zoo yesterday. Sunny skies, temperatures a balmy 60-degrees, we loaded up the car, and after eating lunch at McDonald’s (I’m just now beginning to understand the “beauty” of eating at Micky D’s with children), we finally made it to the zoo parking lot, and thereupon quickly discovered that apparently many other folks in Nashville had reached the very same conclusion: get outdoors while the rain and cold are temporarily departed. Winter will soon be back upon us. False springs are so cruel. My wife purchased a zoo family pass late last summer, and though I questioned the expense at the time, I now see as a stroke of genius on her part. She is usually right in these matters. I am usually a tightwad. While we ambled the paved grounds, pushing Ellis along in his stroller, I found myself more an observer of other people than zoo animals. I noticed folks peering and walking along in their own curious ways, all as different as can be, with cameras in hand, some talking obliviously on their phones, most of them shepherding their own children through the zoological menagerie, and not one of us looking or acting exactly alike, yet all of us bearing some strange and imprecise resemblance to one another. As I paused at the elephant and giraffe exhibits, these tall creatures with their thick, long and spotted necks, tails and ears whisking away flies and other insect annoyances, their trunks groping the ground in search of food, slurping water and filling their mouths for drink and occasional play, I watched these massive animals carry on in their slow gaits, every so often taking a moment to gawk at the much smaller, non-naked beings staring back at them from the site of our safety. It is easy to reside in safety. I wondered how we must appear, if we indeed appear at all – if their brains can reckon and figure such sights – to these captive animals. I marveled at their size, how very large, oblique, intricate and stunning their muscles, how impressive their feet, how casual their actions. Their movement along the trampled ground, the motion of their limbs, their sheer volume caused me recollections of my childhood, when facing such enormity, my brain tingled and lay prostrate at such gigantic traits. It is, I should hope, a natural thing to inhale such awe at the world’s wonders, whether natural or unnatural. I somehow manage to forget just how big certain things are in real life, how vast the world is, how valid it is to actually be living and breathing alongside the rest of earth and its astronomically numbered inhabitants, all told enormous and microscopic. As humans, we must certainly appear both gigantic and minute in relation to other creatures. And yet we are given dominion over them — a great price and a great responsibility. This is not intended to be a treatise on environmental conservation or animal husbandry nor is it a plea to spare the globe from man’s involvement and interaction. Hardly. I am merely marveling – in my own mind, insofar as I can tell – the great and Providential difference that we all are. We roam the territories of our lives, or in this case the grounds of a zoo, and even a blind man in his sightlessness can plainly see that we are all so immensely varied in appearance (amen), culture and action. We are indeed peculiar treasures. It seems appropriate, not to mention ironic, that all of this is brought to my attention while at the zoo, that fenced-in plot of city land where animals of all species, variegations and coloration are separated from man, woman and child by chain-link fence or a puddle of moat water, where the cackle of long-armed gibbons intermixes with the cackle of awed and bored children, where the odor of zoo life attends the meeting and confluence of the opposably-thumbed, stamp-footed, cloven-hoofed, winged and rationally-thinking. Sometimes I wonder which creature is more prone to and capable of the latter. Whether or not you believe the earth, along with all its surplus and supplies, was made in 6 business days, or if you conclude that Evolution – or Creationism, for that matter – is for weaklings, or even if God is a part of any, all or none of the ongoing terra-activities, we are just as bound to marvel at all the differences as we are the similarities, to the skink as to the mighty lion, to the Gentile as to the Jew. Myself, I find comfort in hearing that all of earth – its boundless waters, solid ground, endless azure skies, kingdom of creatures – is not only something to be marveled at, but is likewise marvelous in its inherent Goodness, the everlasting, unbound, permanent meaning of the word, and the fact that no two human beings throughout all of time, on all the plains of earth are exactly alike is nearly unfathomable. It is good to marvel.

Good, beautiful and true. Those are the three words the interview subject told me, the interviewer, were the standards for meaningful art. Those are the words that he used to measure art and its value. Of course, his explanation flowed with eloquence and brilliance and I found the entire discussion stimulating. And those terms are obviously subjective, but they give us some sort of guidelines for measurement, which is needed, right? Erik ended up saying this in the interview: “The good, the true, and beautiful, properly defined and practiced, contain everything that I want in art and creativity. What other words could be added? Excellence? Maybe. Substance? Possibly. But those words, to me, are already woven deep into the richness of goodness, truth, and beauty. Nothing else is needed. My prayer is that artists study those words, brood over them, wrestle with them like Jacob.” I think I agree. At least with the idea of starting with a few words. Perhaps I would choose excellence. But there are other questions than this: Is it even necessary to have words for measuring art’s value/meaning? If so, what words are proper to use? How does one determine what is good, beautiful or true?

In most churches there’s a lot of “Lord, come down and bless us with your presence” rather than taking Jesus at His word: “Where two or more are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” Fact. So prayer is largely meant to be thanksgiving and praise for what is (even if it doesn’t appear as an “is“) because God said it is so. Thank You, Lord, that I am loved and accepted. Thank You that by one sacrifice I am made perfect forever, and that You are working that Perfection out into my daily life. Thank You, Lord, that You work all things, not “some things,” after the counsel of Your own Will. We don’t have to ask God to act as much as we thank Him for Reality; His stated Word is reality in its purest form. We can ask Him to manifest that unseen Reality by faith into the seen realm. But we don’t question its ‘is-ness’. We take it by faith. The thing IS. I AM holy, even if I feel unholy. I AM forgiven, even if I feel unforgivable. I AM one Spirit with the Lord, even if I seem separated from Him. So – I’m blood-bought. Blood-washed. A king. An heir of salvation. A son. A partaker of the divine nature. Complete in Christ, having everything I need for both life and godliness – needing nothing outer, not approval, acceptance, good circumstances, money, anything. Everything is contained right here within this human cup, this human zero, and God is the Wine, the All, inside this cup. And He and I are one – a marriage union. When I rely on these truths of what IS, God acts by me. When I go back to the Romans 7 paradigm and live from that, Satan gets his arrows in me, with their strings attached, and uses me like a marionette by pulling those strings. A return to Romans 8, trusting the Spirit within me and thanking God for the Blood that cleanses me of all sin, kicks the Devil in the teeth and confounds him. We’re meant to live in Romans 8 and 9, not 7. Many churches teach 7 is the constant state of the Christian. What a defeatist mentality! The sum-total of our Christian lives down here: “Try to do the best you can.” Yuck. The JWs believe that same thing. I’ve told them, “You live in 7!?” They said, “Yes. 8 is for the Elect.” (meaning the 144,000). I said, “I can’t LIVE there anymore! I hate living there. I live in Romans 8 and 9 most of the time now.” Because 8-9 is the life of faith in God’s stated Facts – and by faith in those Facts, He begins to manifest them into our seen world. Romans 7 is life by our own effort, by our own works, by our own ‘trying to be like Jesus.’ And the outcome is “The things I want to do, I’m not doing, and the things I hate, that’s what I keep doing.” Being controlled by the flesh – feelings, thoughts, desires of the flesh – is really being controlled by the Devil. What believer in his right mind would want to stay there? So – we concentrate on the IS-ness of God’s reality. That’s what we grab onto, and after grabbing on we’re like a pit bull – we don’t let go for any reason. That’s the endurance of faith. Patience. By faith and patience we inherit the promises – not “up there” or “pie-in-the-sky,” but here and now in this temporal realm. And so we are privileged to pull the unseen realities down into this seen world into visible manifestation. That’s the essential paradigm of the Christian life. It undergirds all revelation. It is the foundation of our interaction with God, because trust is the foundation of relationship.

It’s a little sad, but I’ve had to learn to selectively muffle my enthusiasm with family and friends when it comes to music and movies that move me. Sometimes I fear I’m pushing too hard. Sometimes I wonder, am I sharing from a pure heart or from some latent competitive intention bubbling beneath the surface like a volcano ready to erupt? Sometimes I expect my audience to get it–see what I see–without prompting. More than once, I’ve felt quietly and maybe self-righteously indignant when they don’t. Sometimes I fear I push the art with what might seem like a salesman offering faux Rolexes from the lining of his coat. The harder he pushes, the more human nature wonders, “What’s wrong with him?,” or “What’s wrong with his message?” I have a friend that reacted a little too casually to the music of Andrew Peterson when I first introduced it to him. So I none-too-subtly sent him each new Andrew Peterson CD after Carried Along as it was released. Fast forward to years later as I played Love and Thunder on our drive from Chicago to Milwaukee last summer: I silently celebrated as he sang–word for word–every song on the CD. I won! Indeed, it felt like victory, yet there was this annoying little itch that I sensed the urge to scratch, that felt something like–conviction. As I reach to insert my latest and greatest CD purchase into the slot, how many times have my wife or son said, “How bout’ let’s talk? Do you mind leaving the music off for awhile?” The movie Saved features a scene in which Hilary Faye throws a Bible at Mary, saying, “I am FILLED with Christ’s love! You’re just jealous of my success in the Lord!” Mary, picking up and holding the Bible, replies, “This is not a weapon! You idiot.” As I proofread music or movie reviews I’ve written, I sometimes sense an insistent tone, as if the reader must capitulate to my wonderful words. “If you don’t love this CD, you must be an idiot,” or so I might as well say. Eric Peters has a revealing slice of wisdom in a line from the song “Bus 152”: But demands don’t bring penance like I thought they would.  Of course, I’m too smooth to make any of this overt, to say it out loud, but I am not the Holy Spirit. There’s something so incredibly satisfying about serving your family and friends a perfectly cooked meal. And nothing says perfectly cooked like sweet and tender meat the just falls right off the bone, full of delicious smokey flavor. A great kamado grill such as one of these best kamado grills can get you that. The post is helpful in directing you towards the best kamado grill for your particular needs. We’ve looked at a big variety of grills, made from different materials and of various sizes, some with stands, others stand-alone, and in a range of prices. It’s my hope that you found what you need. The Spirit will move in His time, not at the beck and call of this silver tongued devil. If somebody needs to be convicted of a thing, or follow a particular path, it’s not my place to find just the right track that will put them in their place, the right movie that will bring them to their knees, a song that will make them cry tears of contrition. The above thoughts occurred to me (once again) after reading wise words from Ron Block and Andrew Peterson in the thread, “A Stream Across the Path.” AP wrote: The relationship that you have with Jesus, the intimate nature of your connection with him, is not exactly the same as mine. You have things to teach me about the mind of Christ, insights into his Word that I cannot see on my own. There are things about him that may be very clear to you that have never crossed my mind. His Spirit lives in you, and it lives in me, and we are not the same. Ron Block wrote: If I could change one thing about my past it would be that I would much earlier have realized that I can learn something from nearly everybody if I have the right mindset – a humble one. Pride is the most insidious of sins. It stealthily wraps itself up in the midst of good intentions and honorable work. The same God who inspires us to share beauty and truth with another soul is the same God that stands waiting to temper our words and intentions with love–and extinguish any residue of selfish gain. In The Big Kahuna, Danny DeVito’s character Phil Cooper says, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.’ That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are – just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.”

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Gustave Flaubert I just read this quote and was quite taken by it simply for its right-on-ness. The writer side of me has endless ideas for books, articles, essays and even blog posts forever lost, aborted by a lack of time and/or remembrance. Fictional plots and non-fictional rants are constantly lost due to my lack of organization. Distraction kills small bits of life that attempt to grow during the few times I actually focus. It’s frustrating to have a tool so wonderful as my laptop (I’m totally a Mac geek and look down condescendingly on any bulky PC user in my local coffee shop) and yet lose productivity due to the ease of access to email, etc. And I am finding that I need to be obsessively organized and focused, setting silly rules for myself so that I don’t waste the time/day away. Does anyone else deal with this? Do you find that quote to be true? As a site full of both artists and patrons, I would think this would be a timely topic. And if you do find it to be true, what do you do to combat it? Artists are generally horrible at administration, so how do you conquer your poor habits to generate the art that good discipline can breed?

I was reading through the responses to the Sigur Ros video and decided to grab a line or two from each one. It’s remarkable to me how varied the reactions were to this piece, and it’s taught me something about the way we all approach art differently. I’ve so often been exasperated by the lack of widespread success of some artists, wondering why more people don’t rush out and buy this or that songwriter’s albums when the music is so clearly powerful and emotive. But then I see the responses to this video and I’m reminded of the almost mystical nature of art and imagination. God has created music, words, visual art to carry a kind of spiritual power. They speak to us in ways that can be as profound as anything we might come across in this world, much like magic beckons and guides in fairy stories. Have you ever been stopped in your tracks by a lyric in a song, maybe even one you’ve heard a thousand times? Frederick Buechner says that the moments when tears spring unexpectedly are the times when you’re brushing up against the eternal. Those are the times when you’d better stop and take note. Pay attention. Write it down so you’ll remember that moment when your heart grew softer. Remember, because this is something that can actually happen, even to us. But we’re all on the journey, aren’t we? Some of us are in the valley, others on the side of a hill with a long view of the country ahead or behind. George MacDonald described Jesus’ parables as springs that ran across the path rather than beside it; they’re bubbling with life, but we might not drink of it until we reach that part of the journey when we’re able to understand it. Or, we’ll understand it differently when we’re farther along. This has been true for me. I grew up with the Scriptures and am still largely baffled by them. But when those moments come in my journey when the pieces click into place and I get that long, cool drink of water from something Jesus said, I’m reminded of MacDonald’s wise words. I learn that there’s nothing wrong with mystery. I learn that my heart is finding its way. The Spirit-wind blows where it will, sometimes howling out of the imagery of a group of brave children leaving their old lives behind and charging up the mountain with a mighty roar, leaping into the great wide freedom of their faith’s reward. ————— It’s important to realize that a difference in reaction to a piece of art does not your maturity define. Not to keep harping on MacDonald, but I’ve found great comfort in something he said about what he called “the secret chamber in the heart of God.” He said that God has reserved for each of us a unique chamber in himself into which only we may enter. The relationship that you have with Jesus, the intimate nature of your connection with him, is not exactly the same as mine. You have things to teach me about the mind of Christ, insights into his Word that I cannot see on my own. There are things about him that may be very clear to you that have never crossed my mind. His Spirit lives in you, and it lives in me, and we are not the same. Someone asked the late Mike Yaconelli what it meant to be “spiritual.” He said that “being spiritual is nothing more than paying attention.” People have asked me about songwriting and that’s the pat answer I give them: keep your eyes open. Look for meaning, because the world is fraught with it. If you believe that behind (and beyond) the veil of this world is a Creator who knit us together, cast us into history, and gave us the gift of his presence–a living wind that is as much God as Jesus is, living within us–then life is no longer meaningless, but infinitely sacred. I don’t mean that we should superstitiously look for answers in places where we shouldn’t, like studying tea leaves or lines on your palm, but that we should look deeper and see the thing for what it is: tea leaves make tea–why should that be so? Because God filled this world with good things (especially good if the tea is sweet and iced, and you’ve just finished mowing your lawn). Look at the lines on your palm. There’s no answer to your employment or relational dilemma there, but if you look closely you’ll see calluses, maybe scars that tell part of your story; you’ll see that you’re unique, or maybe you’ll notice what a profoundly useful contraption a hand is–and placed just so, at the end of your arm, where it can hold a hammer and nail to build house or a music box, where it can press the strings of the guitar in a way that just might make someone’s heart leap in their chest when they hear the song, where it can feel the smooth skin of your baby’s back or turn the last page of the book so you can find out what happens in the end. We must learn to see. And if we don’t see, we must learn to try. Now, I don’t mean that there’s something wrong with you if the Sigur Ros video didn’t float your boat, goodness knows. That would be silly and elitist. There were lyrics in last week’s song comments that didn’t move me one bit, and that’s fine too. To change MacDonald’s water analogy a bit, artists are digging wells and diverting the water to make streams that cross the path. Our hope is that people on the journey will stop and drink and taste something eternal. Maybe this video was a stream you haven’t reached yet–or maybe it was a few miles back and you’re hungry for something deeper. (Of course, there’s only one place to find living water, and he is the source of all joy and meaning and grace. The above analogy only goes so far.) Here’s a compendium of the responses to this stream on the path, which will hopefully help us to appreciate the diversity of our experience and the power of resonance. When the artist touches the pulse of someone, something beautiful happens. For those of you who “didn’t get it”, I’d be interested to hear some examples of when you felt your heart leap from a piece of art or writing or music. “For me, since I dedicated 6 years of my life in college and grad school to studying saxophone and jazz I may be moved by a John Coltrane solo in a much deeper way than someone who never listens to jazz and finds it to be a bunch of noise.” “I guess my overriding feeling from the piece was its pure joy.” “I think that each of us see pieces of Heaven in little things, not all of us in the same things. We see these little glimpses and whispers of Heaven that are perfect bits of promise of what God has for us.” “So in my mind I was wondering why they were alone, where they were going to, coming from, orphans, and really thought tragedy was coming when they charged the hill and it turned into a cliff . . . I admit I’m jaded.” “I think this is a neat video. But that’s it.” “My favorite bit (apart from the wonderful diversity of the “follow me” calling scenes) is when they start to run, casting aside every encumbrance in their single-minded pursuit of the goal.” “I kept waiting for something profound so maybe that was what my problem was. But i didn’t think it was emotional in the least.” “…it still rings true, and I think that’s because it’s calling to the part of me that believes in something more. Not just the child in me. The hope in me.” “Each image holds meaning. It’s worth it to watch this several times to lasso further meaning.” “…and yes, it makes me cry too — when he starts beating the drum and they all charge the mountain in unison…. Whew.” “Wow. Beautiful. I’m not sure all it’s about but I have about a million ideas.” “I guess I’m with the minority as I didn’t get the song and video.” “There is something undeniably powerful about the innocence and the freedom of childhood.” “I’m not sure I get it. The song is good, and it works well with the imagery, which I sort of feel on some visceral level that I can’t quite articulate…” “Yeah, I didn’t get any kind of emotional charge out of this either.” “The world would be a dull place if the same poets moved every soul.” “I think for me it is the unbridled joy that the kids seem to display, all walking and running together for one purpose. This will preach!” “I cannot tell you how much I love this video, this song, and this band.” “Yeah, that’s some powerful stuff. Very cool.” “I won’t go into detail of the numerous hymn lyrics and scripture than flashed to mind during subsequent scenes, but I will say that I had to try and cover my tears in the manliest of ways.”

“The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.” Luke 8:11 “…the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” Heb 4:2 If we don’t adhere to God’s stated facts, God’s right seeing of reality, it doesn’t matter how much we read about it. It won’t help us or change us one bit, and what was spoken of the Hebrews in the wilderness will be spoken of us: “The word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” To mix the Word with faith means to personally appropriate it – to read the promises and take hold of them. God wants a living, breathing faith-relationship with each one of us. We can turn from that, even as believers, and live for the rest of our days at a sub-Christian level; we can wander in the wilderness because we’re not ready to believe we can take the promised land and drive out the inhabitants. “No way. There’s giants there. I’m unloved. I’m not worthy. I’m too insecure. I’m so lustful. I’m not as talented as other people. I have such a temper.” We can go on believing that the gospel is fire insurance and “Jesus died to pay my sin-debt so I could go to heaven when I die,” and miss the real fact that God wants us to co-operate with Him in making our lives a fitting Home for the Creator of the universe; we can refuse His divine objective to make us into living manifestations of His Holy Spirit in the here-and-now. By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Divine impartation of perfection. Bang! We have it. Now – we can refuse to work it out by faith into our daily life because we don’t believe in God’s love or power in us. We can choose legalism – our own human effort trying to ‘be like Christ’; we can choose licentiousness. Both are a lie. Or we can take God at His Word: “But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” Luke 8:15 “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.” Romans 4:20 Caleb, in the face of the contradictory report of the other spies, said, “Let us go up and possess the land, for we are well able to overcome it.” He knew God’s promise. He saw the circumstance. And he mixed the Word with faith; he relied on God’s stated Fact more than what he saw, what he felt, what other people said. Good ground is a hearing heart – a heart that not only hears with its ears, but ruminates and chews and digests what it has heard, and mixes that heard word with faith – reliance – trust – abiding – resting. “There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” Heb 4:9-11 As we labor to enter His rest – a faith-labor, not a works trip – we begin cease from our own works. Our own ways of coping with life. Our manipulations. Our patting ourselves on the back and, as Lewis put it, “Aren’t I a good boy!” We cease from trying to figure life out and do it on our own level and in our own strength; we die to having any concept of our own motive power, we see our total weakness and inability, and in that weakness we begin to find true strength. Rest. Power. And that Power pours through us in our daily abiding – which is just another word for “faith.” “I am the Vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 Apart from Christ living in us, through us, apart from faith-abiding, apart from resting in His perfection in us and drawing on those limitless resources, we can do no thing. No eternal good is possible in our own strength; in the end all such effort works, even those apparently good, will be burned up. When we abide, rest, trust in the indwelling power of Christ as our patience in stress, our peace in anxiety, our strength in weakness, God’s supernatural power flows through that faith-connection. He changes our thinking, our attitudes, our actions. Faith begins to work, and the works are not “the works of our hands” but the works of God’s heart. Life change happens when we trust. “For this cause also we thank God without ceasing, because,when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” 1Thess 2:13 Amp: “…exercising its [superhuman] power in those who adhere to and trust in and rely on it.” What situations are we in where we need to trust God? Relationships? Job security? Financial problems? Fears? Doubts? The answer to every situation is in the Word of God. That’s what Christianity is all about. An indwelling Power. Reliance on that Power. And the result is rivers of living water begin to flow from our inmost being, out into the lives of others. So – we choose. Every day. If I’m in financial trouble: “Malachi says if I give, God will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing so big I cannot contain it.” “Jesus said to consider the sparrows, the lilies. He said if I seek God first and His righteousness, necessities would be given to me as well. I’m trusting that.” So we make our faith-stand, and when it is assaulted, we stand on the committal of faith. Or – we can live in fear. If I’m struggling with inner junk from my childhood: “God says I am a new creation, that old things have passed away, and the new has come. He says I am dead to sin, and dead to the Law; I don’t have to strive in effort anymore to please God. What pleases Him is faith. So I’m going to trust Him, open my heart up to Him, and ask Him to do whatever He wants to do in my life, because God is love.” And so we submit to God and ask Him to work His will in our lives no matter what the cost. Or – we can live with the inner grave clothes carried over from childhood, and not cast them off in faith. The possibilities are endless when we consider the promises of God. Is He truthful, is it true that He “cannot lie,” or is He a liar? We choose. Faith is the crux, the switch of the Christian life. Everything else flows through that.