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In the spring of my seventh-grade year at Calloway County Middle School, a new girl named Heidi came to town, and she was eyeing my spot on the cheerleading squad. You probably think that was cruel of her—to hope to steal such a precious position right out from under me—but you’ve probably also never seen my back handspring. I was, without question, the worst cheerleader on our squad of eight and Heidi was no fool. To make the team, she needed only to be better than one of us when eighth-grade tryouts rolled around. Her bar was low. I was weak and unathletic; I was afraid of heights; I was timid; I often did not understand what was happening on the field or on the court. If you are wondering how I made the squad in the first place, sources tell me that it had something to do with my grade point average.  But no matter how I snuck in, it was a coveted position and I did not want to lose it. What a novelty for me to be able to walk into Dennison-Hunt, the locally owned athletic store in Murray, KY, to purchase a t-shirt screen printed with “Cheerleader” in a little golden megaphone, and to then wear that t-shirt to school the next day! I guess any person off the street could buy a shirt with “Cheerleader” screen printed on it—who could stop you, really—but I could do it with a clear conscience. My fellow cheerleaders were all very sweet to me, but I know that I slowed everyone down. By nature of my being the smallest girl on the team, and with no account of my bravery, I was chosen as the flyer. This meant that Bridget and Laura would hoist me up to their chin’s height, one of my feet in each of their hands, while I held a sign that said “Go Lakers!” or wiggled spirit fingers in the air. But nearly every time we did this, the girls had to take time to convince me that I was not going to fall. (And if I did, that would have been, what—like four feet?) The first time we tried a build, my whole body rejected the notion and aborted the mission by doing a forward flip into Anne-Marie’s hands. That forward flip was the stuff of CMS cheerleading legends, and it was told and retold throughout the seventh-grade halls. The seven other girls could do their standing back handsprings beautifully, and I couldn’t do one at all. Not even an ugly one. Not even with a running start. I watched them like I would watch dolphins burst up from the water and make arches in mid-air; I watched amazed and I watched convinced that this was other-creaturely activity. I was sure that I was not like them in the same way that I was sure that I was not a dolphin. During football season, Janessa had an idea: What if, during halftime, we all stood in a row on the track and launched into back handsprings in succession—like a wave, she said. Well, that sounded like a wonderful idea for seven of us. But how to solve a problem like Elizabeth? I told them I didn’t mind standing off to the side during this display of athleticism, really I didn’t. I could gesture toward them and smile, as if to say, “Look at what my beautiful and talented friends can do.” They wouldn’t accept my polite refusal. But to me, it was more a statement of fact than a refusal, like saying, “I’m so sorry but I don’t think I can grow tail fins and learn how to breach water today.” At practice one day after school, we discovered that I could do something that resembled a back handspring If I stood on a grassy incline between the track and the football field. It turns out that jumping backward down a hill makes a person instinctively stick one’s hands out to protect one’s head, and then the sheer force of gravity pushes one back on their feet. And that looks something like a back handspring. The first time I tried this, the girls rushed toward me beaming with pride. “You did it, Elizabeth!” They cried. They made me believe that I had: that I had become the dolphin. But video evidence from a Friday night football game, where we attempted “the wave,” shows otherwise. The girls had all moved themselves from the track, which was the original plan, to the grassy incline beside me. I went first, perhaps strategically— so that the audience would be quickly distracted by beauty after whatever I was about to show them. What I showed them was likened to a frightened frog who jumps straight up into the air and then immediately loses all sense of up and down. I was still brushing the grass off my knees when the last cheerleader popped up from her perfect landing, but I did it. Or something resembling it.  When eighth-grade tryouts were announced, the rumor mill started churning: “Heidi is trying out for cheerleading, and Heidi can do a back handspring.” “I heard she can even do a back tuck.” ”I heard that Heidi was the captain of her cheerleading squad in Illinois.” ”I heard she was cheerleader of the year.” So Heidi was out to take my spot, and who could blame her? I thought she probably deserved it. My friends looked at me sympathetically—they all knew I was the weakest in the pack—but they weren’t going to let me go down without a fight. They made me stay after practice each week and work on my tumbling. And while I got better, I never could do a back handspring on my own without that grassy incline or one of those girls standing beside me, bracing my back. At tryouts, I brushed shoulders with Heidi, walking in with her older sister, at the entrance into the middle school gym. Heidi smiled at me and then turned to her sister and said, “That’s the one I told you about.” So the rumors were true, I thought, and then I took my seat on the cold wooden bleachers.  Heidi’s tryout was something to behold. She was composed, graceful, and loud. She tumbled beautifully—arched through the air in an effortless acrobatic display. Anne-Marie looked at me nervously; I knew she wasn’t nervous for her own self. I won’t keep you in suspense, dear Reader—I did end up making the eighth-grade squad, along with the seven other original girls. Of course, it makes sense to me now. The coaches would need a really compelling reason to break up a group of girls who had already been together for a year. But I was dumbfounded then, and even a little heartbroken for Heidi. I’m often still dumbfounded by the roles I’ve been given: in motherhood, in friendship, in ministry, in writing—rarely do I feel like I’ve earned my place in any given room. People talk about the reality of imposter syndrome, and most want to talk you out of it. Most want to convince you that you are blind to your own talent and that you do belong in the room. But I know what my own back handsprings look like. If being an imposter means that I don’t belong here, then yes, that is nearly always true in any of my roles. Do any of us? Can any of us say, unflinching and without any doubt, that we have arrived solely by merit to any of the positions that we hold dear, or does every good and perfect gift come from a generous Father? I knew in seventh-grade that Heidi could have done a better job with my spot on the cheerleading squad. But it wasn’t Heidi who ended up in that spot; It was me. And what was I to do with that?  It would not have done much good to try to convince me that I deserved to be a Calloway County middle school cheerleader. I was quite sure that I didn’t. But as far as I can remember, that didn’t matter a whole lot to me. It felt like a gift, and gifts aren’t something you are supposed to earn. And what’s more, I felt like the other girls wanted me there with them, which is another kind of gift. That sort of givenness made me relax. It made me a receiver. If I wasn’t there by merit, then what did I have to prove? I was freed up to give whatever it was that I had to offer. Sometimes that was a really crummy back handspring, but sometimes that was the gift of friendship. Both years on that cheerleading squad, I won the award of “Most Cooperative.” My husband Andrew and I both laughed until we couldn’t breathe when I told him this.  “That’s an athletic award?” He wheezed through laughs.“It is.” I said, “And I won it.” I had been a peacemaker on the squad when things got tense, as they often do amongst middle school girls. Peacemaking was the gift that I had to offer when I couldn’t offer courage or a back handspring.  But for some reason, as an adult, it’s harder for me to relax into the roles in which I’ve been placed. Imposter syndrome asks the question: “Why are you here?” And when I can’t find a satisfactory answer to that question, I tend to think that I only have two options as a response: to either fake it or to step aside.  Faking it looks like believing that I arrived at a position by luck, but now I’ll have to convince everyone around me that I got here by merit. This is exhausting, but who wants to be found out as a fraud? My second option, stepping aside, means excusing myself from the room. It looks a lot like gesturing toward others and saying, “Look at what all my beautiful and talented friends can do,” while I hide on the sidelines.  But a third way is to acknowledge that perhaps it wasn’t luck that got me here, but generosity.  And since I find myself in the room, how can I be generous in return? Imposter syndrome begs me to navel-gaze: How can I prove that I belong? How do I measure up to everyone else here? How do I keep this position? How can I appear more clever than I actually am? But the real antidote to imposter syndrome is to turn my gaze outward: Who are the people who are glad that I’m here, and what do I have that I can give them?  In this third and better response, we are able to acknowledge the givenness of it all: that all of the best gifts come into empty hands. Freely I have received, and freely I will give this humble heap of talents and weaknesses alike. Even as I’m trying to finish up this essay this morning, I’m keenly aware of its faults—of its frog legs in the face of the beautiful dolphin arches that I read in others’ words. But I’m going to give it to you anyway. I’m going to pull myself over to this grassy incline and give you what I’ve got. Maybe that will keep the gift moving—maybe that will make you go do the same. Elizabeth Harwell lives just north of Atlanta with her church-planting husband and her three kids. She’s the author of The Good Shepherd’s Pasture and The Good King’s Feast, two children’s books on the sacraments of baptism and communion. These days, you can find her telling stories on her biweekly Substack, The Things I Carry , where she writes about the sad and the beautiful things that have happened to her, and where she invites you to share your stories in return.

2023 was a year of motion for me - several moves, a lot of travel, finishing a year of graduate school, starting a new job, and last but certainly not least, getting married in the middle of it all. The whole year felt held together by two projects that lasted most of the year and followed me across states, presenting themselves again to me during slow mornings or plane flights or on borrowed library computers. The first was compiling the Every Moment Holy Prayer Journal  - selecting liturgy excerpts, providing accompanying Scripture passages, and writing response prompts for a project I hope lends a new liturgical space to Douglas McKelvey’s prayers. The second was slowly working my way through (and backward and forward and back through again) a 100-page book gifted to me by my now father-in-law: Presence in the Modern World  by Jacques Ellul.  Ellul (1912-94) has a prophetic voice. He’s no teacher or devotionalist, systematically laying out a journey of piety. He’s more of a John the Baptist poking, provoking, and crying out in the wilderness. Like the prophet Jeremiah, he’s the sort who will break a clay pot outside the gate, and after several chapters of examining each piece, lend you just one or two concepts for how it might fit it back together again - concepts guaranteed to shake up a few of your preconceived notions of Christian living.  He also has a rare knack for keeping the uncomfortable tensions Scripture insists upon when it comes to the work of the Lord and human responsibility. In other words, he somehow holds fast to the power and the glory without letting mankind off the hook. All his proddings and pokings lead to his thought in the final chapter that “we should not think that relations between God and human beings...are formed as though people do their part of the work and God does the rest (‘God helps those who help themselves’). In reality, human beings do their work and God supplies to that work his meaning, value, effectiveness, influence, truth, justice - his life." Our work and God’s life - as if he were the vine and we the branches, bearing fruit from the nutrient source. Our work and God’s meaning - so unified that you’d have an easier time separating yeast from flour once it’s been kneaded together.  Another one of those rare folks who keeps the tension is Doug McKelvey, who has spent the last decade or so putting words to the holy moments that present themselves to us amid our ordinary days. He’s given me the language to ask the Lord to supply His meaning to my everyday tasks, each liturgy a varied way of praying the same prayer: “Lord, bring your life to my work.”  The goal of the Every Moment Holy Prayer Journal  is to provide another space, one more personal and reflective, for us to keep praying the same thing, be it through liturgies like “For Blessing a Space” or “On Stewardship” or “On Uncomfortable Conversations” or “On Having Believed a Lie.” The journal consists of 52 entries, each including an excerpt from one of Doug McKelvey’s liturgies in  Every Moment Holy: Volume I , along with two passages of scripture – one prose, one poetry – and three journal response prompts. Each entry also provides space for us to write our own prayers or liturgies each week. We (that is, the folks lending their time and thought to this project - Doug McKelvey, Pete Peterson, Leslie Eiler Thompson, and myself) have sought to capture the varied seasons of the soul in these 52 entries. Like a map, this journal allows us to identify where we are in any given day or season and choose an entry or theme that fits. This is to serve two purposes: first, that we might know and shape the posture of our hearts now as we move forward, opening ourselves to the life of Christ in our daily work - every dusty spiritual corner and attic space. Then, keeping this journal for years to come, we might also be able to see where our hearts have been in the past. Someday we will look back to see the kindness of the Lord when we were there, bringing meaning and truth where we didn’t know to ask.  Jacques Ellul explains that to fail to invite the Lord into our work is to betray both our relationship with the Lord and our relationship with the world - for, as Spirit-bearers, we hold the responsibility to bring Life where we can: in “Small Things” and in “Mighty Things” and in “Seasons of Illness” and in the work of “Leading Others.” I hope this journal matches the centrifugal motion of the ministry of Christ, beautifying individual lives so that they might beautify the world.  Whether or not we invite the Lord into each area of our lives is, of course, a decision we make each day, a hundred times a day. Part of my excitement in shaping this journal came from discovering and rediscovering countless situations, relationships, or postures in my own life that I so often forget to pray over. Am I not, in this, betraying my own self as well? I who want to live a beautiful life so often forget to invite Beauty in.   Remember that moment in the Gospels when the disciples complained because they found Christ’s teachings confusing? And the Lord replied: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables…Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:11-13) Is not the same true for us, surrounded by parables every day? How will we understand our own lives, if we don’t first ask the Lord to bring His meaning and  ask Him to help us see and know it when it comes? As Ellul explains, “We are tasked with understanding all of these parables in which the action of Jesus Christ is inscribed, in history and in our human lives. And it is only this understanding that can give them meaning. It is only in Jesus Christ that we can possibly understand this wild adventure into which we are thrown, because in the midst of these shadows, he is the person, in the midst of this maelstrom of facts, he is the event, in the midst of these religions, he is the author and finisher of faith.” The Every Moment Holy Prayer Journal  is one way to build this habit of entreating and discovering the meaning of the Lord in our lives - of trying to understand the adventure. It’s a habit of Scripture and writing, liturgy and prayer, kept alongside others in this community and elsewhere. But there are countless other ways. My gift (and challenge) to the Rabbit Room community in 2024 is that we each seek out some way to regularly invite the Lord to lend his life to our work, helping us understand the parables that surround us each day. If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. 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"How can I be sure that God is near? Because you woke me, friend, And brought m e here. .. Love is not a n abstraction in isolation   But a real inconvenient kind of invitation."    "House of Wonder" by Becca Jordan I was twenty-two before I knew that cranberries were a real fruit. My mom swears that this isn’t true, that she certainly made real cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving every year, but I dispute it. For years, cranberries were only that crimson-colored jelly, ribbed by its long stay in the aluminum can, swaying side to side before it is cut into patties. Whether it was the 90s or the fact that my family lived on one pastor’s salary, meals to us were about practicality. We were well fed but mealtimes were not about the pleasures of fine dining.    When I showed up at   L’Abri Fellowship  in the countryside of England in the fall of 2016 as a twenty-nine-year-old, my understanding of mealtimes had remained untouched since childhood. I was still eating to live. Of all the things I thought would be changed during my stay at a place of spiritual shelter, my philosophy of mealtime hospitality wasn't one of them. But it was.    This Song Came From a Visit To L'Abri Fellowship I heard about L’Abri Fellowship as a college sophomore when I read a magazine article about the Christian singer Rebecca St. James. There was only a passing sentence that referred to a place she went to for a sabbatical and its importance in her latest album. I was curious enough to stop reading. It was 2006, so I "asked Jeeves" about it. I wrote it in my journal as a place to go to someday. In 2015, shortly after I moved to Nashville and was unhappy at my job. I decided it was time for a sabbatical.   At L’Abri, there are workers, helpers, and students. Workers are couples, families, or single people who live and work at L’Abri. Their backgrounds are diverse: psychologists, doctors, stay-at-home moms, poets, writers, artists, theologians. They oversee the work of L’Abri. The helpers are a  small group of people who have visited L’Abri and have volunteered a term of their lives to remain at L'Abri to support the workers. They oversee daily chores and cooking meals, among other tasks.  Anyone else who shows up as a visitor or guest is a student. That Morning Lindsey Came Upstairs to Get Me Each week, different workers are responsible for hosting breakfast, where a small devotional thought is usually shared and the events and activities of the day are reviewed. One week, a worker named Lindsey was in charge of hosting breakfast. My friend Shona and I were lollygagging in the bathroom, brushing our teeth together, when Lindsey came into the bathroom and told us that we were late to breakfast and that she was not starting until we got down there. Shona and I glanced at each other and promised we’d be right there. I was miffed, so after breakfast, I asked to speak to Lindsey. I don’t recall our exact exchange, but I remember it being a very honest conversation: I asked why she had to run such a tight ship when it came to a place of refuge, and she explained her intentions and reasons why. We made our peace. I decided to respect her but saw no potential for a blossoming friendship. Man, was I wrong. In 2019 I flew back to England to sing at the first Hutchmoot UK conference . Lindsey drove to Oxford to participate in the conference. I found myself sitting next to her at a creative writing exercise under the leadership of Jennifer Trafton . Jennifer's exercise was called, “House of Wonder.” It followed a Mad Lib format of a short story complete with blanks to write in your own nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Our words, Jennifer instructed us, would come from a pile of words on the table she left for us. Lindsey and I had a delightful time deciding what the foundations of this "house" would be, what would be in the kitchen, etc. We both signed each other's copies and being the sentimental sap that I am, I saved it and placed it in a book.   A Kingdom of Tea and Strangers Years later, after Lindsey and her family left L'Abri, I was at her house and she asked if I heard about a documentary that two young filmmakers, Houston and Debbie Coley, were making about the English L'Abri called A Kingdom of Tea and Strangers . I had not. When I later met the Coleys, I told them that Lindsey and I didn’t exactly start off on the right foot. I recounted the story of being summoned to breakfast and how off-putting I found it. Only, with the perspective of years and having become friends with Lindsey, I found that the story had taken an entirely new shape. “It’s actually rather remarkable to be expected at  breakfast,” I said, “and for someone to come looking for you in order for you to join them.”   When Houston later asked if I would help contribute a song to the documentary’s accompanying album, he asked me to write about the breakfast story. I was nervous even though I had written about L’Abri in the past and had released one song already inspired by one experience there. (" Everywhere I Go ")   The Song Takes Shape During the time I was working on this song, I read The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrer Capon. In this unusual and beautifully written book, Capon, a chef and retired priest, weaves together reflections on food, theology , and poetry. I thought of L’Abri so much while reading. In particular, the last chapter, The Burning Heart, captured my attention: “The most splendid dinner, the most exquisite food, the most gratifying company, arouse more appetites than they satisfy. They do not slake man’s thirst for being; they whet it beyond all bounds. Dogs eat to give their bodies rest; man dines and sets his heart in motion. All tastes fade, of course, but not the taste for greatness they inspire; each love escapes us, but not the longing it provokes for a better convivium, a higher session. We embrace the world in all its glorious solidity, yet it struggles in our very arms, declares itself a pilgrim world, and, through the lattices and windows of its nature, discloses cities more desirable still.” Capon reminded me that the table is not only a place of hospitality but it is a place where our longings are also ‘provoked.’ Later on, Capon writes that all our love is “vast and inconvenient,” and I knew that I wanted to place this truth in the song. Lindsey taught me so much about love and all its inconveniences with her invitation to me that day and all her invitations to me since. This song is as much a love letter to Lindsey as well as the whole community of L’Abri.    Meals still are practical (even if the cranberries are real), but now I see mealtimes as the place where my hunger is satisfied and provoked all at once.  Do you remember when   in the darkest night?   I knocked on your door   and you turned on the light   You opened up   Your heart, your home   You welcomed me inside   So that I would know I belong   When the sun came up   I was still in bed   You came running in   To tell me there was bread   A nd tea and jam   you left your seat   You wanted me to join you   at the humble feast   I take my seat at the table   You’ve been waiting for me   In this house of wonder   where my hunger is a blessing   So we pass the peace   While I pass the toast   You read a poem   From the book of Job   How can I be sure?   That God is near—   Because you woke me, friend, A nd brought me here.   Where I take my seat at the table   You’ve been waiting for here me   In this house of wonder   where my hunger is a blessing   I come with a heart on fire   a ll that I am, all my desire   Love is not abstraction in isolation   But a real inconvenient kind of invitation   So I take my seat at the table   You’ve been waiting there for me  In this house of wonder   Where my hunger is a blessing  Becca Jordan is a singer/songwriter and worship leader in Nashville, TN. You can read more of her writing at The Poetry of Practical Living .

At my house, we have a big whiteboard in the kitchen for menus, shopping lists, schedules, and general reminders. One day I came into the kitchen and saw this reminder written on the board,  DAD OWES WILLIAM $20. This was true; I rarely carry cash, so I had borrowed twenty dollars from my son William. I hadn’t paid him back yet, and I still didn’t have the cash to do so. So I wrote on the board,  WILLIAM OWES DAD HIS EXISTENCE. I figured that would buy me at least a little time. But the next time I came in the kitchen, William had added another line, just below mine: WILLIAM DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN. This little anecdote illustrates a truth at the center of Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift : How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World . We simultaneously operate in two different economies, the market economy and the gift economy. The market economy is a matter of managing finite resources. Money doesn’t grow on trees, as I have often told William. A market economy is made up of transactions that, ideally, represent fairness and balance. If you loan me twenty dollars, you expect to be paid back twenty dollars, possibly with interest. If you pay me twenty dollars, you expect to receive at least twenty dollars’ worth of goods or services.  At the same time, there are goods in life that the market economy cannot account for—goods that you did not and could not earn, goods that you can pass along only as gifts. The greatest of these goods is your very existence: you didn’t ask to be born, yet here you are. A small sampling of the many, many goods that belong to the gift economy rather than the market economy would include friendship, love, oxygen, natural beauty, faith, and art in all its forms.  I have six children. I can’t justify that in terms of a market economy. My wife and I can have no reasonable expectation that the money and resources we “invested” in our children will come back to us. There’s a chance, I suppose, that one of our children will take us in when we’re old and can’t afford a good nursing home. But in strictly market-based terms, the smarter thing by far would have been to invest in a mutual fund.   This is the point at which I am supposed to say, “But, in truth, my children have given more to me than I ever could have given to them.” I actually do feel that way, but that isn’t the point. Such a statement still implies the kind of exchange you expect in a market-based (or at least market-ish) economy: I gave my children something, they gave me something back. It was a good deal for both of us . Instead, I say this: Goods, both tangible and intangible, flowed to me. I didn’t earn those goods, I didn’t deserve them. For the most part, I didn’t even ask for them. Those goods flowed from me to my children. From my children they will flow outward to others (including, but not limited to their own children, Lord willing).  The Gift Must Always Move In Lewis Hyde’s explanation of the gift economy, that idea of goods being passed along  rather than being exchanged  is exceedingly important. In a market economy, you give money and goods to those who can give you goods and money that you deem to be of at least equal value. The books stay balanced that way. In a gift economy, the gift-recipient does not balance the books with the gift-giver. They books are balanced otherwise. For more on how gift economies function, watch this Rabbit Room lecture from Andrew Fellows called " Living in the Creator's Gift Economy ." Unlike money and tangible goods, when it comes to intangible goods (love, joy, peace, security, hope for the future, faith, beauty, the ability to knit or change brake pads), you don’t have less when you give them away. Indeed, you have more. To the extent that you can say they are yours, they are more  yours when you pass them along. Also—and this is exceedingly important—as your gifts are passed along, the world looks a little more like the world you want to live in.  Jesus and the Gift Economy In a market economy, it is possible to create and amass a surplus, and perhaps even get rich. The amassing of surplus is one of the most important ways to raise your own status in a market economy. In a gift economy, you gain status not by amassing goods, but by giving them away. Indeed, there is no practical way to amass a surplus in a gift economy. Gifts accrue worth as they are passed along, but a gift that is hoarded withers and dies. Lewis Hyde illustrates this idea by way of a lengthy survey of gift-giving practices in tribal societies. I won’t attempt a summary. Instead, I will direct your attention to Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant. A servant owed his master a huge sum that he couldn’t pay back in his lifetime, or even in several lifetimes. He begged for more time, telling the master he would pay it all back. But instead of giving the servant more time, the master took mercy on him and canceled the debt. That should have been a happy ending, but the servant who had been forgiven the insurmountable debt tracked down a fellow servant who owed him a small debt. He grabbed him, choked him, and insisted on getting paid. When Servant B begged for more time, Servant A refused and had him thrown in debtor’s prison. The other servants, appalled at this behavior, told the master what had happened. The master, also appalled, un-forgave Servant A’s debt and threw him into debtor’s prison after all.   The unforgiving servant, having received mercy, had the opportunity to increase the work of mercy in the world by passing the gift along. Instead, the gift died, lost not only to the wider world, but also to the servant who had received it. I will also add that part of the unforgiving servant’s problem seems to involve an inability to discern when to apply the principles of the market economy and when to apply the principles of the gift economy. Which, admittedly, can be hard for any of us.  Market economies are remarkably efficient when it comes to exchanging finite resources. The system is abused (and is therefore abusive) in many ways, but even the most fair and equitable market you can imagine still can’t account for many (most?) of the goods that constitute a good life. The market economy is good for what it is good for. But it is easy to overstate what the market is good for. It is easy to mistake how far its boundaries extend. One mistake is to allow the market to define what it means to be a “person of substance." As Hyde writes, Where “getting rather than giving is the mark of a substantial person…a disquieting sense of triviality, of worthlessness even, will nag the man or woman who labors in the service of a gift and whose products are not adequately described as commodities.” Hyde’s observation applies to all whose work is unlikely to make them rich, but his focus is primarily on artists. Artists and the Gift Economy Art, Hyde observes, exists simultaneously in both the market economy and the gift economy.  Then he adds, “Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift there is no art.” Of course, you can pay for art. I hope you do, and often. Nevertheless, there is a strange disconnect between the money you pay for art and the value you receive from it. Lewis Hyde again: "That art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift is received. Even if we have paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us which has nothing to do with the price." When you are touched by art, you feel gratitude. You feel that you have gotten something that you didn’t earn or deserve or pay for. Perhaps you have received something that you didn’t know to ask for. There is a moral dimension here that is worth paying attention to. Hyde quotes Georg Simmel: “Gratitude is the moral memory of mankind.” The market economy, I should add, mostly frees us from gratitude and its moral requirements. When you buy a pair of boots, you don’t feel any particular gratitude toward the person who sold you the boots. You paid your money, you got your boots. Even if you got a great deal, even if it turns out you like the boots more than you expected to, the transaction at the cash register released you from anything as personal, entangling and/or messy as gratitude toward the boot-shop owner. With art, not so much. Art makes you want to thank someone. If art is a gift to its recipient, it is even more of a gift to the artist. The artist’s talent is a gift to begin with, and yet that gift is only a start. The work we’re all hoping to do always feels as if it has come from somewhere beyond our own talent and insight and ego. Hyde writes,  "We also rightly speak of intuition or inspiration as a gift. As the artist works, some portion of his creation is bestowed upon him. An idea pops into his head, a tune begins to play, a phrase comes to mind, a color falls into place on the canvas. Usually, in fact, the artist does not find himself engaged or exhilarated by the work, nor does it seem authentic, until this gratuitous element has appeared, so that along with any true creation comes the sense that “I,” the artist, did not make the work." Art, then, begins not with hard work or determination or a brilliant idea, but with receptivity and gratitude. A whole world of gifts are poured out for you. I’ve already mentioned talent and inspiration, but there are also beauty and stories and the works of other artists that have stirred longing and gratitude in you. The grateful response to all that goodness, truth, and beauty is to pass it along. You will have more, not less when you give it away.  For Hyde, gratitude is something like a labor pain: “Between the time a gift comes to us and the time we pass it along, we suffer gratitude…passing the gift along is the act of gratitude that finishes the labor.” I don’t know how I feel about speaking of gratitude as something we "suffer." But otherwise I take his point. The gift has to keep moving. You receive the gifts that are on offer. Those gifts become the raw material of whatever gift you offer to the world, with a little something new added or transformed. But even that little bit of newness and transformation is a gift. Art is a gift, coming and going. Jonathan Rogers is the host of The Habit Membership and The Habit Podcast: Conversations with Writers About Writing. Every Tuesday he sends out The Habit Weekly, a letter for writers. (Find out more at TheHabit.co .) He is the author of The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor, as well as the Wilderking Trilogy, The Charlatan’s Boy, and other books. He has contributed to the Rabbit Room since its inception. If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

Throughout history, the Psalms have given words to the people of God—words of praise, of affliction, of prayer, of longing, of rage, of wonder, and of doubt. This was also true for the biblical writers; the Book of Psalms is the most quoted in the Bible. This book of prayers and songs influenced the way the biblical writers thought at the deepest level. Even Jesus, in his moment of greatest pain and need, turned to the psalms to shape his last words from the cross. For the past several years, I have been working on a project to create poetic renditions of the psalms paired with a new poem at the Darkling Psalter. It has been a rich opportunity to study each psalm in Hebrew, read commentaries, and chase down theological rabbit trails in an attempt to render the psalms with reimagined language. Here is a seven-psalm introduction to the Darkling Psalter offered in hopes that these fresh renderings can help shape your thinking about your life, your experience of God, and your prayers. Note: Each of these was originally published with an accompanying poem. To read both the poem and the psalm, you can find them here: 13 , 16 , 31 , 39 , 51 , 130 , and 147 . Psalm 13 Will you forget me forever, God? How long will you hide from me? For how long will I be left with only The quiet wonderings inside myself As I carry my grief from day to day? How long will my enemies stand over me and crow? Look at me. Consider me. Answer me, God. Make your light break over me. Open my eyes or I will close them in death. Don’t let the things that would throw me down Discover that they have overcome me. Nevertheless, I have pledged myself to your unfailing love. I long to hear news of the victory of your salvation. In my heart, I feel the joy of it already. Even poetry, even song rises out of me Because my God has richly seen to me. Psalm 16 Keep and tend me, God, for I fled to you for refuge. You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you. Your holy people are my delight. Those who sell themselves to other gods Will find that sorrow billows out all around them. But I will not pour out blood to the darkling gods, Or even lift up their names on my lips. For the Lord is my lot, my portion, and my cup. The lines of my life have fallen in pleasant places. All around me grows a beautiful inheritance. So I bow myself before the Lord who gives me counsel, Even in the night he gently instructs me. He is always at hand, always before me, So even when I slip, I will not fall, And even when I fall, I rise. My heart is glad, my hands are full. I am happy and secure. You will not abandon me to death, Nor let me tumble into the pit. No, you teach me the way of life By walking it with me. At your side, I am safe and satisfied. At your right hand, I am at peace forevermore. Psalm 31 Lord, I flee to you for shelter And you set aside all my shame. Your righteousness is forever my escape. Stretch yourself toward me and hear me. Hurry to snatch me away From these dark glamours. Be my mountain stronghold. I need a house Strong enough to hide in. All my life you have been My rock and my fastness. For the sake of your name Take my hand and lead me out of these lesser loves. Release me from the pits that I keep Tipping into and loving the fall. If there is safety, if there is rest, If there is a home, it is only you. So into your hand I commit my spirit, For you are my ransomer and my ransom. So many cultivate the vanity of things And swear themselves to other gods, But I have given my trust to you, Lord. I have drawn my gladness from your steadfast love Because you have watched my affliction. You have known my fear as if you hung in my own place. You have not given me over to the hands of my devourers, But have stood me on the rock And given me a place to live. Now, Lord, show me your favor, for I writhe. I waste. I am washed in the amber grief light. I do not have another try in me. My years have come to this. The things I have done have rattled me to bones. When my friends see me they are afraid And I can see their fear. A dread stretches behind me and I will not look back To watch the people I love scatter and turn away As if I was not a living man, but one of the forgotten dead. Beyond that, I can hear them, my enemies. They are devising together a death for me That they will call good. But you are still my God, my place, My refuge. All these worries run Inside the circle of your hand. Rescue me now. Make me see Some light, some bigger love. I am still yours. Make all the things that hunt me Slip soundlessly into the hungry ground. Double their plotting back against them. Silence them and make the truth speak out. Despite all of it You have hidden so much goodness away For those who fear you. You have built Such a shelter for any who would come. They are hidden at your side, Kept like treasure from the strife of tongues And the brokenness that would not let them go. When disaster set up its black banners all around me You showed me marvels greater Than the plain fears in front of me. Even when I panicked and knew for certain That I was cut off from you at last, You showed me again that you hear, you see, You mind, and stand beside me. People of God, give the Lord all the love you have to give. He is your guard and he keeps watch Over those who have given themselves to him. But he collapses the towering works Of the proud down all around them. So be strong and take courage All you who wait on the Lord. Psalm 39 I promised myself: I will watch all my ways And my words will not go wrong. I will muzzle my mouth When the wicked face me. So I was mute. I held my silence. But I kept peace for nothing. Pain doubled within me. My heart grew coal-hot. I barely whispered but it was fire Not words my tongue made. O Lord, how does this end? What is the span? What is the reach? What bounds have you put on my fleeting days? You gave me time no wider than a handsbreadth. What is the line of my life Beside the light's long walk between stars? Where I go, a long shadow follows, A breath - and the shadow passes. Surely it is for nothing, for wind, for vanity That I have spent so much time in toil Heaping up what I can barely carry, What, at the end, I will set down in a pile And leave behind. You are the one I'm waiting for, Lord. My hope is in you. Deliver me from all of this. I would rather suffer under your hard hand Than face the scorn of fools. I lay my hand across my mouth. When you discipline a man You eat like a moth what his days have made, You fall on his dear things like locusts. You make salt pillars of his loves looking back. Turn aside from this plague. We are only breath. Hear my prayer, Lord. I raise this cry to you with tears. I have wandered with you through These years, as have all my fathers. Now look away that I can smile again Before I depart. Psalm 51 Have mercy on me, O God. According to the love you bear me Beyond all my circumstances. According to your great compassion, Wipe away the guilt from the bonds I have broken. Tread me until all my crookedness is gone, Wash from me the joy I felt at my failures. I am familiar with all my rebellion, And the monstrous loves that would consume me Are always at my side. You are the one I have failed, In fashioning evil instead of good. Even if all were false, your words would still be true. Even if all were guilty, your justice would remain. From birth I was twisted and bent; I was marred even from the moment I was conceived. But when you find firmness and faith inside me, it delights you. You teach me wisdom and store it within me. Sprinkle me with blood and I will be clean; Trample me in the water and I will be whiter than snow. I want to hear joy and gladness; Let the parts of me you have broken rejoice again. Hide from yourself all the times I have cherished the wrong; Utterly remove them as though they never were. Do not fling me away from your presence. Do not separate me from your light and life. Summon me back once again to the joy of your salvation, Teach me to lean on you while you hold me up. Then I will show others the path I walked back to you, And they will lay down their revolt and return. Rescue me from the guilt on my hands, O God, my deliverer, my salvation, And my tongue will tell of your justice. O Lord, open my mouth and I will praise you. For you do not delight in sacrifices or I would give them; You will not accept a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A crushed heart that knows it is shattered, O God, This you will not despise. Do good to Zion because you delight in it; Build up the walls of Jerusalem; Then you will take delight in the right sacrifices, All the offerings you have asked for Will be brought to you and laid on your altar. Psalm 130 Out of the depths, I cry to you, Lord. God, hear my voice. I need you to attend To my pleas for mercy. If you kept our crooked loves always before you, Who could endure it? But with you is forgiveness So that we can know the fear That brings peace and consolation. I wait for the Lord with my whole life And in his word, I hope. My soul waits for the Lord More than watchmen wait for the morning, More than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord, For with him there is unearned love and kindness And a vast redemption. He will lead you back Until your love is healed and whole. Psalm 147 Praise the Lord, For it is good to sing praise to God; For a song of praise is right and fitting. God rebuilds Jerusalem, He gathers together all who have been driven away. He heals those who carry their wounds within them And binds up all their brokenness. He knows the number of the heavenly host And gives them all their names. Great is the Lord and great is his power; His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts the humble up again, But the wicked he lays low. Sing to him with confession and thanks; Give God all the song you have. He covers the heavens with darkness and clouds; He prepares rain for the earth; He makes grass grow on the mountains. He gives the animals their food, And feeds the young ravens that call out to him. His greatest delight is not in the strength of a horse, Nor in human swiftness, But the Lord delights in those who fear him, Who hope in his unchanging love. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion! For he strengthens your gates, And blesses your children. He sets your land at peace; And fills you with the finest wheat. He sends out his commands in all the earth; His word runs swiftly out from him. He sends snow like wool; He scatters frost like ashes. He flings hail like crumbs; Who can stand before his cold? He sends his word and melts them; He makes the wind blow and the waters run. He makes his word known to Jacob, And declares his judgments to Israel. He has not done this for any other nation, They do not know his law. Praise the Lord! Andy Patton is on staff with the Rabbit Room and is a former staff member of L'Abri Fellowship in England. He holds an M.A. in theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He writes at The Darking Psalter  (creative rewordings of the Psalms paired with new poetry), Three Things  (a monthly digest of resources to help people connect with culture, neighbor, and God), and Pattern Bible  (reflections on biblical images in the Bible). If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

Rachel Redeemed interviews UK singer-songwriter Michael J Tinker about his forthcoming 10th Anniversary Children’s Double Album, the vision behind his music, and what he has learned over the last 10 years of creating songs for families. Order the album here .] Rachel Redeemed: Hello Michael J. Tinker! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background as a Christian songwriter for those who aren't familiar with you?  Michael J. Tinker: I’ve been making music professionally since 2011, when I basically found myself unemployable having got a theology degree and I've been working at churches for seven years! So I turned to making music. I've done six children's albums and four, what I refer to as, "grown-ups" albums. RR: Nice! How did it all begin for you?  MJT : I wrote a couple of songs for a holiday club in 2013 and they seemed to go down well. I also had a ready-made children's story that I'd written when I was 17 as an Easter Sunday talk called ‘ Inspector Smart and the Case of the Empty Tomb'  which was essentially exploring the evidence for the resurrection in story-form. So, I approached a publishing company called The Good Book Company to do both the book and the album, and they kindly agreed! After that, I started touring a show and it seems to have blossomed since then. RR: How has the vision for your music changed over the various albums you've produced? MJT : I’m not sure my vision has changed. I always wanted to write fun music for children that got them to the heart of the gospel and also dealt with difficult issues that children would be facing. I also wanted to do that in a musically interesting way. That's the great thing about writing children’s music - you really can pick any genre you like and have some real fun with it. One fundamental thing I've been keen to do is take children seriously, both in what they can understand but also what they're dealing with. You know, they're having to deal with pretty much all the things that adults have to deal with - loss and sadness, struggle and joys and happiness and finding their place in the world - but they often don't have the everyday language, let alone the gospel language, to be able to understand and navigate all of that. So, I want to give them that language, those gospel tools, to help them through life, and I find one of the best ways to do that is through song. RR: Can you tell me about one person who has particularly shaped your music or your approach to songwriting or recording? MJT : In terms of kids music, the Australian songwriter Colin Buchanan  springs to mind. He has been making music for children since the early 90s and particularly my younger brother enjoyed his music as a child, so his work became a bit of a template. He had a really fun approach to music, but he was also theologically rigorous. However, he did everything with an Australian accent and with lots of references to kangaroos and Coolaroo etc, which we didn't really understand, so I thought it was about time to have an English voice doing that kind of thing as well. In terms of style, I listen to lots of different music and you'll hear hints of that in the songs. There's a bit of Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Bon Jovi, Paul Simon, Funkadelic. There's some Parisian jazz in there, even some dubstep. RR: And who is one person you've met at a gig or interacted with online who has encouraged you to keep going?  MJT : Again, Colin Buchanan has been very encouraging, especially earlier on when I was setting out on this journey, and he encouraged me to keep Jesus as my treasure. It was great advice because it's so tempting in any sphere of work, but especially in music, to want glory for yourself, to find the treasure in popularity, in how many people are listening to your music. But it is so important to keep Jesus as the treasure, and then those other things - they can come and go, and it doesn't matter because ultimately I'm serving him. RR: Can we have a sneaky window into your creative process? What has crafting an album started with, looked like, and felt like for you?  MJT : For my children's music, what’s driven most of the songs is my own parenting. My children might be dealing with a particular issue or worry or struggle, and I think ‘I need a song about that!’ It’s the best way to embed truth in the heart. A great example of this was when my daughter was struggling with a worry about something she had done wrong, and her little brother came in, he must have only been 4, and whispered to his mum, "Tell her - 'As far as the east is from the west…’" It was in a song I had released  not long before and that truth had got deep into that little boy's heart, ready to pop out when it was needed. Sometimes it's an issue I'm struggling with and I need a song to remind myself of Gospel truth. I think you'll probably trace the age of my children through the different albums as well. For instance, on the first album, there's a song about contentment and getting upset at a party or a trip to the theatre - things not living up to our expectations. On the most recent album, there's a song about hormones! Discipleship has generally driven the songs. Sometimes it might be hearing a great line in a sermon. I think songwriters are magpies always looking out for some shiny scraps of lyrics and ideas and themes and grabbing them and turning them into a song. If there's a great line at the end of the sermon, I'm gonna nab it and put it into one of my songs! Other times, I want to have fun with a particular style of music and so we start there. We write the tune and then I find a Bible story or theme that really fits that feel. RR: When you've hit a roadblock in your journey as a musician, what's gotten you through? What did you do next? MJT : I hit roadblocks all the time. Some songs come very easily and roll off the tongue. ‘ It's All About Grace ’ was one of those easier songs. I was teaching through the Bible using the Jesus Storybook Bible and the theme of grace kept coming up and I thought ‘I need a song about that’, so I wrote that one very quickly. Others have been a lot harder, sometimes because of the music. There's a song called ‘ This Is Faith ’ which we wanted to do in a Paul Simon, ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Shoes’ style and I was trying to fit Hebrews 11 to that music. Other times, it's about finding the right words - you have the idea but fleshing it out can be really difficult. The main thing that's got me through is tenacity - just keeping on writing, writing, writing, writing, and then at some point it clicks. It's a bit of a mysterious art really - who knows where it comes from? Well, I think it comes from God and he gives us the words and out it flows. But sometimes it can take hours, days, or weeks sitting and staring at a piece of paper, trying to make sense of the idea you have, and turning it into a song. The other thing that's helped is working with other people. When I started, I thought it was a bit of a failure if I needed to have other people involved in the process. Surely, all these great songwriters did it all themselves? But the more that I've written and the more I found out about other songwriters, the more I realized that great songwriters work with other people. We're not meant to do it alone. So that's got me over some roadblocks. Just getting a fresh pair of ears or eyes onto the song, and they can just take it in a new direction and then it all flows. RR: If you could go back and talk to yourself at year zero, what advice would you give? MJT : Find other songwriters to work with and get over yourself! RR: What advice would you want to pass on to someone keen to hone their craft of songwriting? MJT : Just keep doing it, keep writing. I always say you gotta write 100 songs and one of them might be really good. Find people who are slightly further down the road to get their thoughts on your songs. It might be just changing a couple of lines that makes all the difference. You might be great at coming up with a phrase, but somebody else is great at making that scan and flow musically. One of my songs is called ‘ You’re Loved ’. I sent it over to Ben Shive to write the string part and to give some thoughts on the song, and he suggested just a slightly different emphasis on the first couple of words in each line, and it makes the song flow so much better. Don't be afraid to ask for advice. RR: A big finish, but let's do it... what have you learned about God in this 10-year journey of growing as a musician and songwriter?  MJT : That He is so patient and I am not! I want things to happen very quickly but songwriting has taught me to be more patient, to take time to work hard and something beautiful comes from that. God is so patient with us - he takes so much time in honing us as his artwork and he creates something beautiful. RR: We're thrilled to hear you have a 10th-anniversary collection of songs in the works - there'll be details below for folks to support the Kickstarter for that, but tell me about one song on the album that has a special resonance for you in this season.  MJT : The newest song on the album is called ‘A Simple Faith’ and after 70+ kids songs, it really does boil down to that. It's about a simple faith, a simple trust in the King. We can dive into theology and in trying to understand God better and that is a wonderful and important thing to be doing. But to know God, to be in a relationship with him just takes a simple faith. Look at the thief on the cross! He didn't understand much, but he had a simple faith, and Jesus said, ‘today you will be with me in paradise’. Order the album here: https://michaeljtinker.com/product/ive-got-a-song-about-that/

Happy Thanksgiving, folks! We’re thankful for all of you and want to offer a few words and songs you might find useful during today’s festivities. Now turn off your phones and computers and feast (right after you read this post). First is this video of an excerpt from “A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends” from Every Moment Holy . Download a free printable version of the whole liturgy here. It wouldn’t quite be Thanksgiving (for me, at least) without a reading from Robert Farrar Capon’s Supper of the Lamb . You might find, as I do, that it’s a great blessing over a feast. From Chapter 16 of The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon “For all its greatness (trust me—I am the last man on earth to sell it short), the created order cries out for futher greatness still. The most splendid dinner, the most exquisite food, the most gratifying company, arouse more appetites than they satisfy. They do not slake man’s thirst for being; they whet it beyond all bounds. Dogs eat to give their bodies rest; man dines and sets his heart in motion. All tastes fade, of course, but not the taste for greatness they inspire; each love esacpes us, but not the longing it provokes for a better convivium, a higher session. We embrace the world in all its glorious solidity, yet it struggles in our very arms, declares itself a pilgrim world, and, through the lattices and windows of its nature, discloses cities more desirable still. You indict me, no doubt, as an incurable romantic. I plead guilty without contest. I see no other explanation of what we are about. Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers, why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry, or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half of earth’s gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become. For all its rooted loveliness, the world has no continuing city here; it is an outlandish place, a foreign home, a session in via to a better version of itself—and it is our glory to see it so and thirst until Jerusalem comes home at last. We were given appetittes, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.” And a benediction from Chapter 15: “I wish you well. May your table be graced with lovely women and good men. May you drink well enough to drown the envy of youth in the satisfactions of maturity. […] May we all sit long enough for reserve to give way to ribaldry and for gallantry to grow upon us. May there be singing at our table before the night is done, and old, broad jokes to fling at the stars and tell them we are men. We are great, my friend; we shall not be saved for trampling that greatness under foot … Come then; leap upon these mountains, skip upon these hills and heights of earth. The road to Heaven does not run from the world but through it. The longest Session of all is no discontinuation of these sessions here, but a lifting of them all by priestly love. It is a place for men, not ghosts—for the risen gorgeousness of the New Earth and for the glorious earthiness of the True Jerusalem. Eat well then. Between our love and His Priesthoood, He makes all things new. Our Last Home will be home indeed.” And finally, I’ll leave you with two songs. First up is Son of Laughter’s “The Meal We Could Not Make” from the new album No Story Is Over . And the second is maybe my favorite song my brother’s ever written, “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone” from Light for the Lost Boy.

Several years ago, when we lived in the thick of the suburban jungle, we would load up the jogging stroller with a toddler, strap the youngest in a carrier, while our eldest sauntered alongside, and embark on an urban pilgrimage to the grocery store. I (Ruth) carried along the same backpack I had used while hiking the Camino in Spain, except now it was filled to the brim with milk, pasta, fruit, and vegetables—with baguettes strapped on the sides. Although we did not manage to do all our shopping this way, we made it a regular habit to walk rather than drive, trading convenience for a less tangible reward. It was one of the small anachronisms that resisted the unbearably fast pace of life, and prompted many a driver who zoomed past to take note and wonder: Why would anyone choose to do something so slow and effortful?  Now that we live on the edge of Mennonite country, we frequently encounter horse-drawn carriages conveying families to the grocery store or church, young ruddy-cheeked men and women cycling long distances to school or work, or gaggles of children walking alongside the fields toward home. Most of us cannot imagine (and may not desire) to return to such a seemingly cumbersome pace of life. Yet in an age where technology has wholly reformed our imagination, visible models of anachronism serve an essential role in reminding us that slowness and effort make us more human. You may be among the many people looking for guidance and support as you experience a tectonic shift in our relationship to technology amid a sea of digital deluge. This sea is vast and its surface remains mostly unbroken. It reflects the present default axiom when it comes to our technology: “anywhere, anything, anytime, for anyone." In the midst of this flood, there are only rare examples that make ripples by modeling the opposite: “only in certain places”, “not everything”, and “it depends on your age." Though the immensity of the task of reining in the effects of digital technology on our lives may seem daunting, we must remember that we still have agency. We do not have to wait for reforms to move from the top toward us. We can start from a bottom-up direction and instigate seeds of change by unsettling the assumptions about omnipresent technology use.  Haley Baumeister recently commented in the lively discussion on Dixie Dillon Lane’s post at Tech in the Family that “People can't practice or do what they've never seen done. This is true of more analog and human ways of living in 2023. And modeling such lives can be contagious.” While we cannot possibly expect to offer suggestions for anachronistic practices that speak to everyone, we would like to inspire you to stand out, to model different choices, and yes, even to be weird, by sharing some of our own decisions that we have made over the last two decades. Depending on your relationship to technology and your life philosophy, they may strike you as absurd, reasonable, or as not going far enough, but we hope that the examples will spur you on to sow your own seeds of anachronism.  "We act in hope that repeated exposure to the Good, the beautiful, and better will eventually win over hearts and wills and triumph over ease, convenience and in some cases addiction." — Hadden Turner, writes Over the Field How to Sow Seeds of Anachronism in Your Life 1. Flip your phone One of the most anachronistic choices you can make today is going cell phone-free, using a flip phone, or moving to a “light phone.” While there are situations, such as taking care of an elderly or ill parent, when being reachable is important, most  everyday situations do not require us to be as tethered as we are. Never having had a cell phone, I can confirm that this choice is very possible—albeit at times inconvenient—and builds a solid foundation for cognitive liberty. Friends and family know they can reach me by landline or e-mail, and that I will get back to them when I am available.  Helpful phrases: (all have been frequently tested with friendly tone and demeanor, with results ranging from raised eyebrows to interesting exchanges and offered discounts).  “Do you accommodate people who choose not to use a cell phone?”  “May I ask why you choose to prioritize customers who place orders digitally over customers who are present here and now?” (when standing in line at coffee shop)  “I choose not to use a cell phone. Can I still take advantage of your offer without a QR code?” 2. Walk and get your bearings straight Life is tuned to the speed of feet. As much as possible, we start our day with a walk through the neighborhood or forest which helps to reorient us to a proper pace, is conducive to conversations, and ties us to reality.  When driving, we don’t use GPS. Instead, we write down driving instructions and make a hand-drawn simple map. This may sound incredibly outlandish, but it will literally shift and deepen your connection with your surrounding environment. By relying wholly on GPS instructions, we lose the important fundamental skill of being able to position ourselves independently. We need a machine to tell us where we are. This dependence leads to a thinning experience of physical locations, which are replaced with more abstract representations of the world. If you want to take it to another level, walk the routes that you customarily drive to get a true sense of the distance and anchoring of your surroundings. We once walked nearly three hours to a bookstore we frequented, and gained a clear understanding of how strangely driving warps our sense of distance, while blurring the unique landscape features along the way.  3. Choose ink  When a twenty-year-old drops the keyboard and takes up the fountain pen, a wondrous individualization transpires. "The keyboard “technologizes” them into users. There, they produce the same fonts. The pen characterizes them as distinct. They produce unique scripts…To compose a cliché with a Pelikan in hand is harder than to compose one on a Mac." —from The Pen and the Keyboard by Mark Bauerlein Writing by hand, especially with pleasing fountain pens, attaches weight and meaning to our words, slows down the thinking process, and allows time for deliberate expression. Peco and I both start our writing process for each article by hand, laying an unmachined foundation, interspersed with conversations over breakfast and lunch, and only then move on to the keyboard phase.  These are some of our notes form the last few months (hard to tell from this perspective, but they actually stack over 5 inches high). Shannon Hood composed 100s of handwritten letters in 2019 and 2020  in part to demonstrate to her children that the hand-written word is worth fighting for. This is one of the traditions that our family has adopted over the last 15 years and affirms the unique importance of family and friends who frequently report how delighted they were to receive a letter. The Letter Writers Alliance  is a splendid resource I chanced upon, containing a myriad of avid letter-writing groups and international pen-pal matchmakers for both children and adults.  4. Spread words Building a “Little Free Library” at the edge of our lawn was a project that we started as soon as we moved into our current home. People come by daily to check for new mysteries, old favorites, or kids chapter books. It is an excellent way to get to know neighbors while spreading a counter-cultural practice. The books are completely free and make the rounds on a “take, bring, or keep” basis. Our box has never been empty. Here are some examples of Little Free Libraries from around the world to inspire you to build your own. Alternatively, you can simply spread books in public places. The Bookcrossing  is an excellent resource that provides guidance on the best places to leave your books, as well as offering a search system to locate over 14,309,627 books that are currently travelling throughout 132 countries. 5. Read or knit (or both) "Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again." —Dorothy Day There are two kinds of people that are easy to approach in public: those who read books and those who knit. This week we had the chance to witness the fruit of a combination of these public anachronisms while at an engineering competition with our youngest son. Almost all of the audience members had their phones actively or passively in hand, apart from my friend and I who were knitting and chatting, and the man seated next to us who was reading a book. I glanced over and noted that it was a book on saints. All it took was an easy “May I ask what you are reading?” to open up a lengthy and surprisingly deep conversation with a stranger (who as it turned out just started attending the same church we do).  6. Leave the kids alone "Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose." —Charlotte Mason Over the years, we have learned to step back and let our children play outdoors, explore, and make decisions untethered by phones. Recently, our teenage son decided to go on a 10 km march/run in the countryside, showed us his planned path, and his expected return time—no phone needed. He came back enthusiastic and beaming. Our younger son regularly roams the neighborhood with a pack of friends in search of tadpoles, salamanders, and adventures. Some rules do apply, but they have freedom to make decisions, solve problems, and grow in self-confidence. While certain neighborhoods are more conducive to “leaving kids alone”, there are myriads of ways to step back and allow for resilience to develop.  For concrete starting points, we highly recommend the Let Grow project   founded by Jonathan Haidt, Peter Gray, and Lenore Skenazy, who are spearheading a movement to help children regain their independence. The site Wait Until 8 th   also has excellent resources to support parents who choose to wait to give their child a phone. Does walking to the grocery store really make a difference? Does drawing a map by hand rather than using a GPS mend our addled minds? Does writing a letter in dip ink stop the Machine? The instinctive answer might be simply ‘no’, but when we consider that all meaningful change must start with small actions, even when they appear futile, it is a resounding ‘yes’!  “Still, there is nothing for it but to get started. All of the best work is small work, after all.” —from The Blizzard of the World  by Paul Kingsnorth So find your anachronism. Use a flip phone in public. Take a pilgrimage to the grocery store. Debate Jane Eyre  with a friend at a cafe. Sing Handel’s Hallelujah  chorus to an urban crowd . Knit a scarf on the subway. Say grace in Latin at an airport restaurant. Ripple the unbroken digital surface. Change yourself and the people around you with the good, the beautiful, and the quirky—and most of all, with the things that keep us truly human. Peco and Ruth Gaskovski write together on School of the Unconformed and Pilgrims in the Machine , focusing on navigating daily life in a technological age. Peco is also the author of Exogenesis (Ignatius Press), a science fiction novel that explores a future divided between a traditional and Machine society.

Few words in the English language pair more congenially than ‘winter’ and ‘soup.’  The very construction evokes warmth, comfort, and a homely sense of contentment. A winter soup is the culinary equivalent of a fleece throw or a woolen sweater: unpretentious, unassuming, and unapologetically cozy. As a means of preventing waste, no other food is so universally relied upon; every culture has its version, I suppose, of “end-of-the-week soup,” into which is tossed the week’s carefully saved carrot tops, herb stems, and cheese rinds along with whatever meat and vegetables need using up. But soup is not merely utilitarian. A good soup is an art form at once modest and consequential, blending thrift and ingenuity with a liberal helping of taste. A humble masterpiece, perhaps, but a masterpiece all the same.       Ask anyone you know and they will be able to tell you of a soup that has taken the chill off of both body and soul, gladdening an otherwise gloomy day with a consoling alchemy of vegetables and herbs simmering in a bath of savory broth. I remember once whipping up a pot of cauliflower-leek soup on a late December afternoon. We had been feasting on rich fare for days—Christmas goose with all the trimmings, oyster pie, cookies and candy and leftover chocolate mousse—so that the prospect of so ordinary a meal felt like an inverted luxury. I browned the leeks in my new Staub cocotte, filling the kitchen with what may easily be regarded the most inviting aroma on earth (“If you don’t know what to make for supper,” an older woman once told me, “just cook a little onion in a pan of butter. Your kitchen will smell so good your husband won’t care what you end up putting on the table.”). After that, a roughly chopped head of cauliflower, some garlic, about 4 cups of broth, a couple of bay leaves, salt and pepper. So simple it was almost amusing. At serving time, I removed the bay leaves and threw in a handful of fresh parsley, touching it lightly with an immersion blender to thicken the stock without breaking down the vegetables too much.  I was just pulling the toast out of the oven—sourdough, with a thick mantle of melted sharp cheddar—when my husband, accompanied by his brothers and our nephew, Wesley, came in the door. They had been out for a long tramp in the winter woods and they were tired, cold, and hungry. Everyone was eager to dish up a bowl, ladling it generously over those golden toasts, and when we sat down at the table the simple plentitude of it all enfolded us in a ring of happiness and love. The candles flickered and danced against the darkening day outside and tendrils of steam curled from cups of strong black tea as we talked and laughed, savoring our modest meal for the impromptu gift that it was. “This soup tastes,” my brother-in-law Michael said meditatively, “like something you’d have by the fire at an English pub after a long walk through the countryside and spend the rest of your life trying to replicate.” I thought I understood him. I, too, have known those moments of culinary felicity (a venison pie on my honeymoon beside a Scottish lake; toasted pound cake, sliced thick and slathered in butter, paired with hot chocolate and a lively late-night chat; moules-frites at a tiny table in a Breton bistro) in which the satisfaction of a particular circumstance flavors the food consumed with a nameless relish. I understood, as well, the power of food to communicate love, linking us to people and places with an invisible chain, tethering us by way of taste and texture and smell to the things that matter most in life. What I did not know at the time was how all of these components—this soup, this kitchen, this tea, this December day, these beloved faces around my table—would merge and fuse into a timeless little interlude of golden-hued joy, a near-perfect harmony of the domestic and the deathless, penetrating the seen with unseen significance.  Looking back, it is easy to see why this meal stands out to me now with such sweetness and clarity: Wesley’s cancer was in remission. He was strong, and we were breathing easier. If a shadow hovered beyond that merry nimbus of candlelight, it was only that—a shadow, deepening the warmth and color of the present moment. When Wesely died eighteen months later, it was to this scene I would return in my mind, again and again, not so much to convince myself that he had been alive and we had been happy, but to anchor myself in all that endured—our eternal hope and our undying love. To say that cauliflower-leek soup was somehow an embodiment of that hope and that love may seem like a stretch, particularly in retrospect, for the scene in my kitchen that winter’s day may very well have unfolded over any other soup, or no soup at all. I can only say that it was  an embodiment, in a way that time cannot diminish and death cannot steal. For me, a good soup goes hand-in-hand with what I like to call ‘wintering with a holy intent.’ Winter is often synonymous with grief, and with good reason, its bleak, barren expanse mimics the inner landscape of a life marked by loss. Grief is not the final word, in nature or otherwise, for death itself must always yield to the resurrection burgeoning beneath winter’s frozen crust, a joy to which every snowdrop or crocus bears witness. But winter, like grief, cannot be hastened. Before the green onrush of spring, we must have fallow days, dormancy, and rest. If sorrow, as the writer of Ecclesiastes insists, makes the heart better, we may safely assume that winter makes our world better, as well. To winter with a holy intent means to accept all of this with equanimity and faith. It means to gather around us the comfort of good words: books, conversations, poetry, Scripture. It means the tangible solace of candlelight, quilts, a new pair of slippers, perhaps. It means, above all, to give ourselves permission to rest—even amidst life’s responsibilities—throughout these darkened days.  To rest well, however, we need fortification. And no food is so fortifying, in my opinion, as soup. I love the way that making a pot of soup slows my body to the speed of my soul, forcing me, if only for a few moments, to fully attend to a colander of vegetables, a cutting board full of herbs. I love the feel of kosher salt sifting between my fingers over a bubbling pot; the twist of the pepper grinder; the goodly glugs of oil. I love the bouquet of garlic, pressed or minced into fragrance (a metaphor in itself), and the last triumphant foray into the fridge which reveals a couple of carrots or a forgotten zucchini just in time to grace my soup instead of the compost pail. I love, above all, the foundational substance of bone broth, that glutamine-enhanced, mineral-heavy mainstay of soups immemorial. Broth is the command center for a healthy, healing soup, and bone broth—for the non-vegetarian, at least—is its noblest iteration. The ultimate measure in conscientious frugality and grateful thrift, bone broth gathers up the fragments of other meals into a final flourish of liquid, lifegiving gold. Thus, it follows, that before I make a pot of soup, I need to roast a chicken.  Fortunately, I do this every Monday, so I can step through the process with relative concision: begin with a good-sized bird, 4—5 pounds or so, rinsed well and patted dry with paper towels. Don’t forget to remove the organ pouch in the cavity of the bird—ideally, these should be used for gravy or some other delectability, but, in our house, our dog, Luna, takes up her post beside the sink the very minute I take the chicken out of the refrigerator, and I can’t bear to disappoint her. Don’t worry, the raw chicken neck it invariably contains is very nutritious for dogs and entirely safe. But never, ever, ever give your dog a cooked chicken bone. Promise me. Place the chicken breast-side up in a large Dutch oven with a lid, and starting from the neck end, gently lift the skin to separate it from the meat. Rub the chicken, inside of the skin and out, with about 2 tablespoons of softened butter or ghee—don’t miss the tops of the drumsticks—then peel four cloves of garlic and quarter an onion. Stuff the cavity with the onion and two cloves of garlic and pierce the skin just where the drums meet the body, inserting the remaining garlic. Bundle up 4-5 sprigs of fresh herbs—parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, whatever you have on hand—and cram them into the cavity. Tie the legs together with a length of kitchen twine and season liberally with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast, covered, at 425 degrees for 1 hour, then uncover and continue to roast for another 15 minutes or so, until the skin is golden and the juices flow clear when the flesh is pierced. You can also use a meat thermometer, inserted at the thickest part of the thigh and roast to a temperature of 165 degrees. Let stand 5 minutes, then carve as you would a Thanksgiving turkey, slicing the breast from the outside in and removing the drumsticks and thighs. Serve with a couple of vegetable sides—roasted sweet potatoes or carrots, Brussels sprouts, steamed broccoli. Your choice. A bird of this size will likely be polished off in one sitting by a family of four. Otherwise, use the leftover meat for salad or in an omelet. Now, and now only, are you ready to make bone broth.  Place the carcass of the chicken, including all congealed drippings, onions, and herbs, in a large stock pot or slow cooker, reminding yourself as you do that the very word ‘carcass’ is a memento mori, recalling the frailty of all flesh and the death which invariably brings us life in the form of physical nourishment. Cover the carcass with water and add a generous splash of apple cider vinegar to help pull the vitamins and minerals out of the bones, but be sure to let your would-be broth sit for at least half an hour to allow the ACV do its work before turning on the heat. For a stock pot, bring to a boil and then reduce to low; for a slow cooker, turn on the lowest setting. In either case, simmer for at least 24 hours then strain and pour into jars for future use (bone broth will keep in the refrigerator for 5—7 days, or in the freezer for about 6 months) or translate immediately into the soup of your choice. Here is one I love: Turkey and Vegetable Stew Serves 6 1 tablespoon olive oil 2 pounds ground turkey ½ teaspoon kosher salt 1 tablespoon butter or ghee 1 onion 2 stalks celery 2 bell peppers, 1 red and 1 green 2 carrots 2 cloves garlic 1 teaspoon cumin 1 tablespoon chili powder ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes 1 quart bone broth  1 24-ounce bottle strained tomatoes Zucchini, 2 large or 4 small  1 cup frozen white corn kernels ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley Freshly ground black pepper    Heat the oil in a large stock pot and brown the turkey, seasoning with the salt and crumbling with a wooden spoon until no longer pink, about 10 minutes. Chop the onion, celery, pepper, and carrots into a ½-inch dice and add to the pot, along with the butter or ghee and cook for 5 minutes, until the onion begins to soften. Mince the garlic and add to the pot, sautéing for another minute or two, then stir in the spices and toss constantly until fragrant, 1-2 minutes more. Pour in the broth and tomatoes, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. 15 minutes before serving, chop the zucchini and add to the pot, along with the corn kernels, and simmer until the vegetables are very tender. Taste for seasonings, adding more of anything, if desired, and serve with a garnish of parsley and a crank or two of pepper, preferably beside an open fire.   This soup, and others like it, helps me to burrow down a bit into sensory comforts and the pleasures of home, arming myself and my household with a nutritious defense against the cold, common and otherwise. For to winter with a holy intent means that dormancy is a natural rhythm of life; I must hibernate before, in Wendell Berry’s phrase, I “practice resurrection.” I need stillness before I need springtime. I need the chastening beauty of winter’s stark lines and angled light; I need hushed rooms and a quiet calendar. Winter reminds me that even barrenness brings forth life and that death is a temporary arrangement. And so, one book, one candle, one bowl of soup at a time, I winter on, in faith that, couched between the glories of Christmastide and the joys of Easter, this, too, is a holy season.     Lanier Ivester is a homemaker and writer in the beautiful state of Georgia, where she maintains a small farm with her husband, Philip, and an ever-expanding menagerie of cats, dogs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, and peacocks. She studied English Literature at the University of Oxford, and her special area of interest is the sacramental nature of everyday life. For over a decade she has kept a web journal at lanierivester.com , and her work has also been featured in The Rabbit Room, Art House America, The Gospel Coalition, and The Cultivating Project, among others. She has lectured across the country on topics ranging from the meaning of home to the integration of faith and reason, and in both her writing and her speaking she seeks to honor the holy longings of a homesick world. If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

My first camera was a 35mm disposable Kodak with 27 exposures and a power flash. It was a gift from my parents before our once-in-a-lifetime trip to San Diego, California, where we planned to visit the zoo and SeaWorld. I could already see the photos - bright pink flamingos with black-tipped beaks, fuzzy snow-white polar bears sprawling on ice, dolphins in mid-air leaps with water droplets flinging from their bottlenoses. National Geographic  was probably going to want some of them. After the trip, my mom dropped the camera off at a cute, little Kodak photo booth. A few hours later she handed me an envelope…of prints. My hands shook with excitement. These were going to be awesome! I opened the envelope and saw the first photo. It took my breath away. Because if you closed one eye, squinted with the other one, and looked really, really close, you could almost see a dolphin. Almost. It was more like dolphin impressionism. And boy was I deflated. I stayed on the periphery of photography after that, until high school when my interest resurfaced. Sandy, a friend and classmate of mine, knew a lot about cameras. But when she started talking about shutter speeds and f-stops and exposure values, my vision blurred from how mathematical and sciency it all sounded. So I ditched it again. Years later, I was working for an organization that does relief and development work all over the world called Food for the Hungry, and I was employed in their home office writing web copy, annual reports, articles, and newsletters. But then they asked if I’d be willing to go out as a photographer to document their work.  Obviously, I didn’t know how to take photos, but the thought of actually visiting the places and seeing the projects and meeting the people I was writing about, captivated me. It was time to deal with those f-stops.  Enrolling at the local community college, I soon found myself taking photography, photoshop and design classes with a bunch of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds. I was the thirty-year-old weirdo. But I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it. I even learned about f-stops, and how they control the amount of light that enters the camera. They don’t create the light, they just let it in. And then, mid-semester, Food for the Hungry sent me and a writer out on assignment to Marsabit, Kenya, to document their work among communities affected by HIV/AIDS.  Wikipedia describes Marsabit as an outpost of urban civilization in the desert of northern Kenya .  Local Kenyans had another way of describing it. “No one goes to Marsabit,” they told us. “It is the forgotten part of Kenya. The only people who go to Marsabit are government workers who are being punished.” So, I would be taking photos in a desert outpost filled with forgotten people, disgruntled government employees, and aid workers.  It already felt dark. How was I going to find the light? That’s the thought that kept haunting me before we left. Because Food for the Hungry was relying on me to get the shots. And Marsabit wasn’t a place I could return to if the conditions were bad or if I had issues with my gear. I would get one chance with the different individuals, families, and communities we visited. I had   to get this right. No pressure. It took us about 30 hours to get from Arizona to Kenya. Then that first evening in Nairobi, I ate something bad at dinner and spent the entire night erupting. It was definitely the spinach pizza. I was two months pregnant at the time but had never been sick until that point. The next morning, bleary-eyed and still quite ill, I crawled into the front passenger seat of a Land Cruiser. It was the perfect vehicle for our journey, except for one crucial flaw. We could not turn off the heater. For 11 jarring hours, we drove from Nairobi to Marsabit on washboard roads in a sweltering vehicle. For most of the trip, I would stumble out of the car in a sweaty daze to throw up each time we stopped.  As we drew closer to Marsabit, the land dried out. We passed animal carcasses bleaching in the sun. We passed Rendille and their flocks of goats kicking up dust. A tree here. A bush there. A wasteland. The nausea in my stomach dissipated only to be replaced by knots of anxiety. This was it. This wasn’t SeaWorld with my little point-and-shoot. This was the real deal. And for some reason, a bunch of people at my nonprofit thought I could do it.  Photography, a word derived from Greek, means “drawing with light.” And ever since that singular moment in time when God spoke it into being, light is everywhere. Imagine that darkness, that all-consuming void, and how it suddenly exploded with radiance. Ever since then, light has been racing out, shooting like starfall through all of time and space toward the lonely places, the wounded places, the forgotten places—places like Marsabit, places like (perhaps) your own heart.  Slowly, as I sweltered through that interminable journey, I realized: I didn’t have to create the light. The light was already there. I just had to look for it. I just had to let it in. From the moment the women in the village greeted us with dance and song to the moment we departed for Nairobi, I shot for hours every day. And every day I found the light. Sometimes—because Marsabit really did feel forgotten—I found it in unexpected places. When we first arrived, the women grabbed our hands and said, “Please tell people about us so they remember we are here.” They asked us to show and tell their story, so we could remind the world of their particular place in it. We drank tea in their dirt-floor homes. We viewed their abundant gardens. We laughed at their gamboling goats. In each location, we listened to their stories, stories filled with pain and heartache, yet also buoyed by hope. And then we would step outside and they would smile and I would start capturing their joy by drawing with light. When I took photos in Kenya, it wasn’t like the photoshoots I do with clients from suburban neighborhoods where the location is hand-picked for its architecture or natural beauty. I didn’t get to choose the backgrounds; I just did the shoot wherever I was, working with whatever I had, which is how backgrounds (familial or otherwise) actually work in real life.  In the village, left-behind orphans in tattered clothes surrounded me as I took photos of left-behind widows in front of tiny, mud huts. But they were new mud huts. And the orphans were no longer alone. Because the widows—who were neighbors—had helped each other build the mud huts, and then those neighbors took in all the orphans.  So much light. Can you see it?  The images I captured in Marsabit are some of the most beautiful photos I’ve ever taken because of how the light came in. Light that began with a single word, spoken outside of time, raced through time, to reach the faces of women and children who have never once, even for a moment, been forgotten.  The light is already here. You just have to look for it. Dana Ryan lives in Southern California with her husband and three children. She is the author of the Martín y Pepe book series. When not writing, she likes to grow flowers, take photos, and go for long walks on the beach.  If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

This liturgy is taken from Every Moment Holy Volume 3  from Rabbit Room Press . You can find more liturgies like these at EveryMomentHoly.com . By Douglas McKelvey O God Who Did First Speak Light into Deep Darkness,  illumine and warm again   our numbed hearts.  For we are increasingly wrung  by this tiring tide of night,  even as our hopes are wearied  by the long winter that attends it.   Our world tilts further from the sun; the days grow shorter by degrees,  the darkness more complete.  Our bodies become sluggish, our brains also—by lack of light—are altered in their chemistry, so that for many of us,  this hard season must be endured as  a war of attrition. We are dug in, defending  against the bleakness of winter, while  levity, productivity, and dreams  are scuttled luxuries strewn somewhere  behind us, abandoned and covered over  as by thickly drifting snows—casualties   of a long battle waged simply to preserve  some shard of hope tucked within  the folds of our souls.   The sunlight, even when it briefly  kisses our skin this time of year, seems  distant, thin, and weak against the gloom.  Ah Lord, how many times might we  say the same of your mercies, your  grace, your presence?  Have we not endured such seasons  of the spirit, when we do not feel  the warmth of your nearness? When  the light of your mercy is pale   and seems so far away? When we cry  to you and discern no sudden answer?  When our love is cold, our fortitude  crumbled, and our faith slumbering  inaccessible as some torpid beast  adrowse in a winter den?   In such times we might have been tempted  even to abandon the main narrative  of our lives: The story of your   life-giving Spirit and your bright  kingdom ever on the move,   at work amongst us,   in us, and through us,  training our hearts to yearn toward  the impending renewal of all things.  Such hope can be a thread   so easily lost in winter darkness. O Christ, shine now, into this long night! O Spirit, blow upon these cold embers of our faith, our hope, our love.  O Father, prepare your children a secret  fellowship and a feast, even here in this place  that feels today like desolation.  Use this numbing chill to turn our faces afresh toward the warming fires of your presence. Use this passing darkness to kindle again our longing for your eternal light.  Use this sad weight of melancholy  to train our hearts more perfectly   in the school of Christlikeness.  For is it not in such bleak fields as these where we might best learn obedience?  Is it not in such dark hours   when we might practice the making  of small, faithful choices, regardless  of our feelings? Is it not in the heavy  temptation to despair that the   worthiness of the object of our   trust is finally proved? Is it not in   this place of pressing cold and   night—when we find that within  ourselves we can no longer muster   meaningful hope of any good end   to our journey—where we must learn  to collapse in your arms, O Christ, and  there find light and grace enough to take  one more step,   and then another,     and then another, until   at last we lift our eyes again   and turning, see how long and far   we have followed you—by a steady   succession of small trusts—through   this bleak and barren slog, trudging   toward the day when winter is   finally in retreat?  And though we know in this life  we will suffer the cycling of   such seasons again and again—our   suffocating sense of the shortness   of days an annual struggle, our tired   hopes pitted perennially against this   cold and darkness—still let us hold   fast in our hearts this secret:   We know that our conflict ends at last  in a final victory of light and delight,  in the City of God, where the  lamb is the light eternal.  AT WINTER SOLSTICE ONE MIGHT ADD THE FOLLOWING:  So here in the heart of this longest night,  let us raise our glasses  to toast this turning of the tide,  this beginning of the victory of light.  Let us step into this fray, well-armed  with mirth and joy, buoyed by   the fellowship of friends,  or at least with a fond remembrance  of such things, and with the good hope of their inevitable return.  Winter has done its worst. And by   your grace, O God, we are still standing.  This night marks not the victory of darkness,  but the far limit of its incursion,   and from here, like an army overrun,  it will be pushed back,   rolled up day-by-day as the sun   draws nearer, warming the ground,  till trees bud, flowers bloom, and   birds return, and we pass again   into the green and golden   light of spring, our world   pregnant with the promise   of resurrection.  So let us assail this keep of winter,  with a sacrifice of conscious praise,   kindling joy inside its dark heart, that  we might find our own tired hearts stirred  again to holy flame, and our own wearied souls  roused to remembrance of—and trust in— the long faithfulness of that same God  who first spoke light into darkness,  that same Spirit who even now   illumines our hearts and minds, and that same Good Shepherd   who leads us through every long winter, and into the budding fields and bright songs  of a world newly awakened.  Amen. If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

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

For this Lenten season, we present a series of interviews with musicians and artists about the ways that music has helped them process and work through seasons of loss and grief. Here Andrew Osenga, Royce Lovett, Steve Taylor, Christa Wells, Tim Timmons, Ross King, and John Thompson open up about the role that music plays in times of grief and lament they have experienced. ​ (Special thanks to Dave Trout and UTR Media) If you’ve enjoyed this post or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

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

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

“‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.’ ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit, ‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’ ‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’ ‘It doesn’t happen all at once…you become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who has to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’ ‘I suppose you are Real?’ said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled. ‘The Boy’s Uncle made be Real,’ he said. ‘That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always. The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.”  - The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams -  The Velveteen Rabbit  is one of those recurring books in my life, ever-forgotten and then reappearing again in my mind like an old stash of photographs or letters or casserole recipes. Every few years, something returns me to the Rabbit and the Skin Horse and the Boy. Most recently, Joel Ansett’s newest album, Layers , was the culprit. Always an artful storyteller in his songs, Ansett’s latest release combines his usual narrative with the sort of quieter, wondering perspective gained from life with his own young children. True to the title track, the album depicts “all the layers keeping us apart” when we hide ourselves away (and isn’t that mostly always?). “I wish it was easy to get to the heart,” Ansett sings, and we all know better than to expect that the cost of getting past these layers will be anything short of getting our hair loved off, eyes dropped out, joints loosened.  From the imagined agony of the first ever sunset (“down on your knees, begging it not to go”) to the innocent lament that “it takes a long time to wait,” Ansett retells in images and stories the journey we’re all on in becoming Real. “ What If We Fall ” describes the hesitancy and cost of love, while “ I’ll Be Here ” tells of the offer to be a listening ear and burdened shoulder. “ Night Sky ” speaks to the dark night of the soul—now that the sun has set—and “ If You Really Knew Me ” tells the story much like that of the Skin Horse, searching for those who will understand enough to see past our shabbiness all over. We, the listeners, like the Rabbit from the story, wish we could become Real without these uncomfortable things happening to us.  But of course, anyone who has made it to the end of The Velveteen Rabbit knows that becoming Real is always worth it in the end, or as Ansett writes, what is lost in the becoming  is “only lost for now.”  “Tell us the end of the story Show us the glory ahead See how the loud and self-righteous have fallen and the broken are lifting their heads. There’s more life up ahead than we could imagine; Our sorrows will turn into laughter again. We’ll drink wine and break bread and boast in our weakness, talk of the ways we were  raised from the dead.”  Precious songs like “ Pull ,” “ Plead ,” and “ Already ” tell of the goodness of becoming Real—the life in relationship with God and man. And it’s no wonder that the final song describes not just one sunrise but “an endless day, and it’s already on its way," for once we are Real, we can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.  But, if you’re anything like me, skepticism wins out at least half the time. My own shabbiness is the thing I let matter most to me most often. I start wanting to break easily just so I can be neatly categorized as “carefully kept” and left alone. If today isn’t the sort of day when you feel much like believing in the story of The Velveteen Rabbit , Ansett has that base covered too. Like us, he’s  “looking for something that stays true  if I believe it or not. You say you’re making it brand new If I believe you or not.” Someday perhaps, I hope, The Velveteen Rabbit  will make its promise known in your life again in some small way. If it’s through Joel Ansett’s album, I’ll be doubly grateful. Joel Ansett has just released Layers on vinyl - a beautiful gift for a very Real person in your life. His vinyl (along with lyrics and other merch) is available on www.joelansett.com , and Layers is available for streaming wherever you care to stream.  Hannah Hubin is a writer, poet, and lyricist. Her projects include All the Wrecked Light: A Lyrical Exposition of Psalm 90  ( www.allthewreckedlight.com )  and the online visual poetry project Brown Brink Eastward. Hubin teaches humanities, writing, and Latin just south of Nashville and is currently pursuing graduate studies in Biblical languages. If you’ve enjoyed this article or other content coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support the work by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

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

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

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

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

Four years ago, I   met Jesse and Leah Roberts, the singer/songwriters of the two-person band, Poor Bishop Hooper , outside of their home in Kansas City. Their living room was full of books, toys, and instruments. Devoted parents of three, Jesse and Leah write and tour their gospel-centered pieces in settings that range from prisons to large, ornate concert halls.  When we met, they had just begun planning their next and most ambitious project, EveryPsalm . Each Wednesday for three years, they released a song based on each of the 150 Old Testament poems. I was thrilled when they invited me to create the album artwork for the project. We started having conversations about the album art in July of 2019. I was a Sophomore at the Kansas City Art Institute studying traditional printmaking. I had just learned the copper etching process and in my enchantment of the   strange and complex medium, wanted to etch all the psalms illustrations into metal plates.   I   created the plates using an etching process that originated in the 16th century.   Rembrandt was a master in this art form, and the equipment I used would not have strayed far from the materials in his own studio.   In the process of making the plates, the designs are first hand-drawn into a copper sheet covered in tar and etched in an acid bath. The plate, now   carrying the line work on its surface, transfers the design onto paper when rolled through a   printing press.  The album artwork visuals are photographs of the copper plates   themselves, and the prints are pulled from their prepped and inked faces when they are rolled   under high pressure through the press. I   started drawing thumbnail sketches and taking notes on recurring imagery as I read the Book of Psalms   category by category. Bible scholars often group the 150 poems into seven general categories: psalms of lament,   confidence, remembrance, wisdom, thanksgiving, praise, and kingship. As I thematically depicted each, I wanted   to create visuals true to the scriptural language as well as the emotional portrayals of   the psalmist.   The Psalms of Wisdom The drawing for the Psalms of wisdom was the first of the seven plates that I completed. It references Psalm 1:3, “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” A man is seen reading scripture underneath a fruit tree beside running water, his foot crushing a serpent below. (Ps. 91)  The Psalms of Lament The lament Psalms are prayers of pain, confusion, and anger. Looking at Psalms 3, 13, 22, 77,   and 51, I wanted to convey grief and guilt. The adorned king is rendered bent and stiff. He is suspended with references to specific   prayers behind him. David’s head hangs low and his stressed fingers appear as if they are   holding a weight close to his chest.  The Psalms of Praise In contrast, the praise illustration is energetic and celebratory. Psalms 29,47, 96 and 98 encourage dance and joyful singing. “Sing a new song of praise to   him; play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy.” Through the   inclusion of man and animal, I was creating a scene of all of creation praising God.   The Psalms of Kingship The kingship etching is my personal favorite. A king kneels beside an altar with his arms stretched high. His crown is set on the ground in preparation for worship. On the altar, a sacrifice burns and smoke rises to frame a landscape of three hills richly decked with resources. This is to represent a blessed kingdom that prospers through the Lord’s oversight. The Psalms of Confidence When drawing the etching for the Psalms of confidence, I wanted to portray the calm voice of Psalm 23.  “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.”(23:2-3)  In it, a shepherd with a gentle expression leads and watches his flock walking beside him.  The Psalms of Thanksgiving The design for the Psalms of thanksgiving shows the aftermath of battle. The background reveals fallen soldiers, horses, and scattered weapons. A kneeling king, with his helmet at his side, raises his hands in a posture of prayerful gratitude. His army waits patiently from a distance as he thanks the Lord for a battle won. The Psalms of Remembrance Similar to the lament plate, I wanted the design for the Psalms of remembrance to be a scene reminiscing on past events. A lone Israelite woman in the wilderness kneels with her arm extended. A quail stoops down to land in her open hand. Water pours from a split rock and circles around her. In the center, the parting of the Red Sea is shown with a crowd of refugees moving through it. Three of the ten plagues are shown above the parted waters; a cluster of locusts move with the tall grass around the sea, now red with blood. And a swarm of airborne flies move towards land from above.  I had never read the psalms thematically before working on this project with Poor Bishop Hooper. I remember being taken by the various authors’ expressions of artistic loyalty throughout the poems.  “If I forget you O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget how to play the harp. May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I fail to remember you, if I don't make Jerusalem my greatest joy.” (137:5-6). Seeing artmaking as obedience to the ancient text was a lovely concept to contemplate as I was an art student myself, finding my own visual language of worship.  Poor Bishop Hooper’s Everypsalm project is on all major music streaming platforms as well as on Everypsalm.com .  Lauren Stevens was raised alongside car engineers and Bible scholars in the desert terrain of Chandler, Arizona. A young love of pen and ink drawing easily translated to the linear nature of copper etching when she studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. There, she earned her BFA with a specialized emphasis in printmaking. Now, she is furthering her research as the Fall 2023 printmaking candidate at Arizona State University.  Her work can be found on my website, Laurenstevensart.com  and a closer view of her process is shared weekly on her instagram account, Laurenstevens_prints.  If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us by clicking here. 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I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. Not compared to the average person. I mean, I don’t think  so. After the other day I most assuredly should not  spend more time there if this is how I’m going to behave.  I decided to check on a friend on FB. It had been a while. Perhaps it would be good to “like” some photo or post. Let her know I was thinking of her. The first thing I saw on her feed was a stunning photo, like National Geographic  quality. She was seated on a shining chestnut-horse, standing  atop a cliff overlooking the  Rio Grande Valley 1000 feet below with the Sangre de Christo  mountains of New Mexico radiant in pale pink and rose in the distance. The Blood of Christ. In the warm sun she only wore a light jacket. A wave of jealousy like an ocean roller boiled me over. I wanted that.  Why did she have this privilege and not me?  Why did she deserve such a beautiful vacation? It had been days since we had seen the sun in Minnesota. Between snow and rain, every day was chill and gray. Why must I pull on a down jacket every time I opened the door and run to the henhouse? I was jealous. Feeling sorry for myself, my eyes misted over. It only took seconds to begin real crying—what was this ugliness? This envy? Why should I begrudge the beauty and vacation she was enjoying? I know how wrong this is. Discouraged, I wondered how I could possibly change my instincts; my envy had risen unbidden. In any case, that’s nothing compared to murder, rape and other kinds of mayhem. But God does not rationalize. The last commandment: Thou shall not covet. That evening Anita and I spontaneously made a fire outdoors. Gathered downed branches and twigs from the ravine. Found last summer’s hot dogs in the freezer. Marshmallows. Red wine. $10 worth of firewood from Kwik Trip. Three hens hanging on the grass beside us. Pecorino and Brie pecked up the last of the ketchup on my plate and wiped their beaks on the grass, then panicked and tore in opposite directions to hide from a large hawk floating overhead—they spotted it way before we did. As the sun set and the air chilled, wrapped in scarves and blankets Denis read his latest limerick, as we chatted into the night until the wood turned to glowing coals and hot ash. “My beloved just bought a new laptop, And hoped she could just use it nonstop. But to update each setting Caused a great deal of fretting, So we are headed right back to the shop.” That night  I lay in bed reluctantly processing the day knowing I needed confession. My thoughts about that friend were ungracious. Unkind. What have I to complain about? I have an abundance of love from Denis. Friendship with our housemate, Anita. That very day we had wood to build a fire. Some don’t. Blankets kept us warm. Simple food to enjoy. Pet chickens that make me laugh. Should I complain when so many in the world would opt for just one of these things? Don’t misunderstand. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a horse and a mountain view. It’s that this heart of mine was awash in envy and needed restoration. As I write this, we are entering the time of the church year called Lent. How timely for my soul! It is the period of fasting and regret for one's sins observed from Ash Wednesday until the dawning Joy of Resurrection Day. During Lent our eyes and hearts turn to the Cross of Christ in a special way to be reminded of what it cost Jesus to redeem people like me whose offenses may be hidden from you, but not from God.   During Lent, the Bishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya ends each service with a blessing and asks everyone in the congregation to use their bodies to pray. Here in Minneapolis where we worship each Sunday we, too, have learned our African Brother’s blessing. We are invited to sweep our hands toward the cross above the altar with each refrain and then, with the last refrain, together we sweep our hands toward heaven.    All our problems of this life on earth: We send to the cross of Christ. All the difficulties of our circumstances: We send to the cross of Christ. All the devil’s works from his temporary power: We send to the cross of Christ. All our hopes for wholeness and eternal life: We set on the risen Christ. Yes. That’s it. It’s all I need. Margie Haack and her husband, Denis , are co-directors of a ministry, Ransom Fellowship , which helps Christians engage postmodern culture, and challenges them to live in ways that are both authentic to the Christian faith and winsome in its expression. Margie is the editor of a quarterly newsletter, Notes From Toad Hall, where she writes about being faithful in the ordinary and the everyday. If you’ve enjoyed this post or other work coming out of the Rabbit Room, you can help support us by clicking here. Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

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

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

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