In Rod Dreher's memoir, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, he begins with a story of his sister Ruthie, seven at the time, and himself, five. He had done something particularly awful, he recalls, and his father had told him to go lie down on his bed, a precursor to one of his "rare but highly effective spankings." He knew he deserved it. He knew that it would be perfectly just for his father to spank him. But then, just as his father entered the room, Ruthie ran into the room, sobbing, and threw herself across him: "'Whip me,' she cried, 'whip me!'" He recalls his father turned away, and Ruthie left, and he remained, wondering what had just happened. And he says, "Forty years later, I still do." All the elements conducive to a life of crime were present in me from an early age. Marry opportunity and rationalization and it becomes easy to break the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal." Or any commandment for that matter. As the elements were being passed at Holy Communion this past Sunday, I was meditating on my sin, as I suppose it best to do, a breviary of sin, in fact, and yet this one sin occurred to me: I was a thief. At 12 my friend and I were hired to deliver a free weekly newspaper in our neighborhood. On a good day it took maybe two hours to cover our route. This thin weekend chronicle we bundled up and were supposed to place on each doorstep. In the beginning, we did just that: we rode our bikes up driveways, disembarked, and carefully placed the paper on the doorstep, tucking the corner under the doormat to keep it from blowing away. For this we were paid, as I recall, about two dollars each, a not insubtantial sum for a 12-year old in 1970. One of the first things we discovered was that not everyone was excited about getting this weekend guide. One overweight man in a wife-beater t-shirt, sporting a five-o'clock shadow, threw it back at us. "Get that damn paper out of my yard." Dogs nipped at us. People asked us not to ride our bikes in their yard. We'd find the paper, unfurled, careening and flapping down the sidewalks of streets with names like Fernwood, Robinhood, and Cornwallis, like literary tumbleweeds. "Hey, isn't that our paper?" Yes, of course. Of course it was. There was little positive reinforcement from the recipients. Pretty soon we had to face it: no one wanted our little paper. It was a blight on our corner of suburbia. A rag. From there it was a slippery slope. We deleted a few houses. Didn't want it anyway. Then we knocked off a whole quadrant of the neighborhood. Too many dogs. We got sloppy, lobbing papers into yards, driveways, side porches, in shrubs. Hey, it's in the yard, and they can get it. Pretty soon we're burning through the entire route in less than 30 minutes, stuffing a few excess papers here and there in trashcans. Surplus. Before you know it we're only doing the street we live on, as far as the creek that winds under our street, and one day at the creek we find ourselves toting pretty much the whole load of the papers down to a sandbar, digging a hole, and burying them, thinking we were doing everybody a favor, after all, cleaning up the neighborhood of trash, taking care of it in an unsightly and biodegradable manner. That's how I became a thief. We were caught, of course, our livid employer giving us a tongue-lashing and requiring immediate repayment of a day's wages. "I trusted you. You let me down." Only a day? I broke into my coin collection, wrested free the two dollar bill from its special holder, as well as a few collectible quarters, and paid the woman. And the guilt settled in. And at that point in my life I had no where to go with my guilt. That one sin is indicative of how tainted I am and have been, how bent toward wrong I am, and how easily I can go wrong. But Sunday, at Holy Communion, when that youthful indiscretion rears its head, I realize again that I have a place to go with that guilt, guilt not assuaged by repayment of some of what I stole. The defect is far deeper than that. Total depravity. Every single thing I do is touched somewhere by impure motive. More wrongdoing was to come. But in the body and the blood, my guilt is paid for, Christ substituting Himself for me, getting the just deserts for my thievery (which goes far deeper than a few newspapers). Substitutionary atonement is one of those awesome and awful tenets of Christian faith. God's perfect love and perfect justice meet at the Cross. We like to quote the Apostle John's well-known maxim that "God so loved the world that he sent his son. . . (John 3:16), and yet God also ordained for Christ a suffering and death that we really can't fully comprehend in its horror. As Michael Horton summarizes, "[H]is love had to comply with his justice. The punishment that Christ bore was not an arbitrary act of revenge, but a fulfillment of the standard that God had established in creation: namely, life for obedience, death for disobedience. The cross was a satisfaction of the claim of justice, not of dignity or irrational anger." And justice is fundamental to the nature of God. He cannot act unjustly. What kind of God would not uphold justice? Ruthie's Dad, confronted by the sacrificial love of his daughter, turned away. I understand why he chose not to uphold justice. I suspect I would do the same and for less an appeal than Ruthie made. And yet God did not turn away from his own son. He upheld justice through Christ's substitution for His people. That's awesome and awful, a justice fully swallowed up in love. Ruthie's Dad, perhaps, turned away because he knew, in the end, that Christ died for his son, that justice would be upheld, that the little death his son died that day would be swallowed up in the victory of the Cross. All to say, there is great hope for thieves like me. Continue reading

There are chilly winds blowing in the world. And yet we have a way of selectively reading reality, filtering out or minimizing the things we don't want to think about, turning up our collar to a frigid truth if we venture out, warming ourselves by the glow of hearth and home. But sometimes reality gushes in, and we realize that indeed a hard rain is falling. Two recent articles in First Things changed the normally sunny weather I travel in. In one by Wesley J. Smith, entitled "Medicinal Murder," the author documents the steady expansion of euthanasia in Europe. As case in point, he cites Belgium, where suicides are termed by many in the medical community as a "beautiful death," not merely suicides of terminally ill persons but even of those who, because of depression or lack of will to live, are ready to end it all. Furthermore, he documents the ungodly linkage of euthanasia with organ harvesting. Society now benefits from mercy killings. And when there are legal violations of euthanasia laws, enforcement is lax or nonexistent. Thus, a cultural shift has ocurred where death is celebrated as one more benefit of human autonomy: you can choose when to die, and society and the medical profession will help you and even profit from your death. Smith notes that once euthanasia is legalized, the categories of people eligible for it expand, but the rest of society ceases to think it matters. He believes this trend is symptomatic of cultural nihilism. Perhaps you know this. Perhaps the essay only confirms what we already know. But it is worth reading for the last paragraph, where Smith offers the antidote: What is the antidote? Love. We all age. We fall ill. We grow weak. We become disabled. Life can get very hard. Euthanasia raises the fundamental question of whether our culture will retain the moral capacity to sustain a culture of care for those who have entered life's most difficult stages. On that question, it seems to me, hangs the moral future of Western civilization. For as the Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne has cogently warned: "A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured. So that's it? Love? Not taking to the courts, mounting advocacy for life, passing laws to protect the elderly and infirm? Just love? In that same issue of First Things, in an article entitled "Lena Dunhams's Inviolable Self," Alan Jacobs contrasts the moral world of Jane Austen and the apparently amoral world of Girls, an HBO series in its first season. He describes a sexual fantasy that one of the main characters, Adam, has about his rape of an 11-year old heroin addict. As shocking as this is, what Jacobs focuses on is even more shocking: In all the reviews of the show none of the journalists admit to the possibility that there could be a moral dimension to Adam's reverie. And apparently fans have no problem with all this either. They continue to watch. This is in contrast to the moral world of Jane Austen, where there are categories of right and wrong and we all know what they are. Once again, however, the antidote to this amorality is not, Jacobs says, to meet it head on. He concludes: "To someone who thinks Adam's fantasies are unproblematic, or even commendable, there is nothing for me to say. I confront a linguistically unbridgeable gap; I confront incommensurability." In other words, these two worlds do not connect. As I said to someone I was having a heated discussion with many years ago, we have lost the ability to communicate, at least propositionally, as we do not share the same understanding of the world and, in a sense, the same language. We talk past each other. So what do we do? Jacobs says that what we need "is not condemnation. . . but better art and better stories --- better fictional worlds. . . . [N]ot the abolition of mythic sandboxes but the making of sandboxes in which to play with true, or truer, myths." Rather than simply condemning the fictive world of Girls, we can write and film truer stories that capture the imagination, that give viewers or readers a vision of a different reality. Rather than shows about the "beautiful death" of assisted suicide, we offer up excellent stories of the reverberating compassion and love that might surround the disabled or aged, stories that help people imagine that compassion grows in the face of suffering, in standing with the dying, not in ending their lives. We may reach some people by arguing propositional truth. But in this time we may reach more by telling better stories, by opening a portal to the True Truth at the heart of Reality. In a culture that no longer speaks our language, our venue for persuasion has shifted. A decade ago I was standing at the back of the Acoustic Stage at the Cornerstone Music Festival when a muddied grunge-rock fan ambled up. He stood gaping at what he heard. "This is beautiful, man, just beautiful. What is it?" The acoustic, story-driven songs resonated with him. All he had heard was the loud and gutteral screaming of the bands playing in the tent next door. He was mesmerized by the different reality of the Acoustic Stage. And as a result, I was able to tell him what he was hearing. "Art," Picasso said, "is the lie that tells the truth." "Tell it slant," said Emily Dickenson. Christians, get busy lying. And get busy loving. That's the antidote for a culture gone wrong. That just might change the weather. Continue reading

Thanks to all of you who came out for the concert last Friday. WE put the house back together and sent Mandee, Cristi, and Burton back to Tennessee, sadly. What a great evening! When it's all over, it's like leaving camp friends (or so they tell me). I posted a few pictures of the evening here. Stay tuned for announcements about a Fall concert. But never fear. . . for a few months I will leave you alone! Continue reading

I recently bought my daughter a cool blue 2005 Mini Cooper SE Convertible. It's hot. Really hot. When she leaves for college in August, I'm going to drive it. Yes I am. I've been thinking about this: I want to practice jumping in the drivers seat and screeching out without opening the door. I've seen it done in the movies. It may be anatomically difficult, and I may injure myself, perhaps irreparably, but it goes with the turf. You see, I gotta get myself a little mid-life crisis. My crisis is I never had a mid-life crisis, and I wonder what I'm missing. Clothes? Same old, same old. Hair? Less. Same house, same job, same church, same wife (yes, honey) and so on. But I love all those things. What to do? I figure I can kick-start the process with a supped up car. Right? It takes me back, way back. My first car was the gold '72 Camaro I bought in 1974. Oh yeah. I went right from dirt bike to a "What you got under that hood a 350 V-8?" Camaro. And I was dangerous. I'd crank up the 8-Track of Led Zeppelin and let it go. The night I turned 16 my friend (who was a whopping three months older and had his license) and I drove all night over four counties. Just because we could. 9 mpg. Gas at $.32. So, I guess I had my mid-life crisis at 16. I want to drive top down. Play Fountains of Wayne. Get an attitude. Drive between the pumps at gas stations. Parallel park in spaces the size of my inbox. Connect. Chat with the drivers at stoplights. Wear 24/7 sunglasses. Out there. You gotta get out there. Try out extroversion, see if it's all they say it is. Stop listening to myself think all the time. Play "Traffic and Weather," by Fountains of Wayne, with their frothy attitude and roadside hipness. Turn it up. When my daughter leaves home, I'll cruise the high school lots, hang out in her favorite coffee-shop, trace her absence all over the place. Even listen to her music. The Blend. Sirius 20 on 20. Summon up her smile, her wit, and her 18-year old life in the present tense. Existential. I'll drive her car to work, to lunch, to get ice cream, to the mall, to church. I'll hang out in parking lots. I'll do nothing. I'll post statuses like "what's up i'm in my car eating at taco bell how about you?" or send pithy or inane or innocuous 140 character text messages to other people who like to send 140 character text messages. Because that's just how they do it. Stay connected. Watch YouTube silly videos, because she did. Drive just to drive and on cool nights leave the top down and turn the heat up high. I'll drive downtown and think of all the conversations we had and all the things "dad you don't understand" and the accomplishment of getting her to laugh at a dumb joke and her hair blowing in the wind. The same wind that blows across her midwest college town. The same wind. And about October, when it's too much, I'll hit I-40 and head due west, her mother and I, queue up a playlist of oh about 400 of my favorite songs, and watch the miles pass. 24 hours. 16 to 17 songs per hour. 400 songs. Lots of sun and wind and particulate matter. Truckers butting each other to establish dominance, says Bruce Cockburn. Rumours of Glory. Plenty of time. Tick off the states --- Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri --- and cross the "miss the mississippi and you" and somewhere out on those Great Plains, amongst the tallgrass and wobbly cowboys, east of the Pecos and West of the Ozarks, I'll find her. Nope. Nope. Probably just stay right here. Drive her Mini. Touch up our empty nest. Practice the rest of life. Decorate her absence with memory. Write letters. Read melancholy poetry. Wash the Mini. Pray hard. Live life. Let go. And miss her. I'll miss her. And when Christmas comes and she returns, soaked in independence, with new vocabulary and a midwest-tinged plain-speak, with stored up life that I missed because she was there and we were here. . . well, so she can have the Mini SE Convertible back, because it suits her and I'm tired of being beat to death by the wind and riding on the ground, numb in my posterior. I had my little mid-life crisis. I'll be over it. But I'll never, never get over her. I won't. We're like "traffic and weather." We just go together. Continue reading

I did not really know Edith Schaeffer, having never resided at L'Abri, the residential Christian study center that she and husband Francis Schaeffer started in the Swiss Alps in 1955. I did, however, meet her on two occasions. Once, in 1992, I attended a L'Abri conference in Rochester, Minnesota, her then home. She gave a rambling talk at the conference, the subject of which I have forgotten, remembered like a verbal abstract painting, I thought, wonderfully passionate and yet not fully connected. A youthful, late Seventies Edith was signing copies of her books afterward, and when I approached her she was alone, amazingly enough, as a throng had been around her most of the time. But it would not have mattered. Others have remarked on how warm and personable she is, and that proved true. In that moment, at least, Edith was genuinely interested in me, smiling, asking about my family and my interests, as if I was the only one in the room, drawing the Alps on a whole page of my copy of L'Abri (her story of that place), signing it to my whole family. She never looked impatient or concerned about the next person in line. It was only me. She was a model of the kind of dead on attention I would hope to give (and yet seldom give) to those I meet and talk with. She embodied hospitality. My next meeting with Edith occurred about 14 years later, in 2006, when Edith was about 92. My business and wirting partner Kevin and I were in Gryon, Switzerland, where Edith lived under the care of her youngest daughter, Debbie, and husband, Udo Middleman. We were to interview Edith for an audio biography we planned. Edith arrived under her own steam, well-dressed, as always, smiling, helped by two Swiss hiking poles but otherwise providing her own locomotion. Sitting down with her inside, talking with her, it was obvious that she did not have a full memory, as some answers were prompted or supplied by Debbie, but her eyes were alert, her voice strong, and she remembered fondly the times when her kitchen work was complete and she sat near the woodstove and listened to the provocative discussions led by her husband. I suspect that this tireless woman was glad to finally sit down. Whatever else the Schaeffers did at L'Abri (and much was done there), it began when they opened the door of their home and of their hearts to people from all walks of life, inviting them into their lives, sharing what little they had with them, and offering them friendship and a place where any question could be asked. Through their words and example, many came to know Jesus. Some were unconvinced. And yet virtually all would have to admire their integrity. They lived what they taught. I have been told that Edith would often be on her knees cleaning the kitchen floor at 3:00 AM, or preparing meals for new arrivals at that hour, and that the Schaeffers were often up late writing personal letters to those who inquired of them, studying, or praying. Though others knew her far better than I, still I will miss her. She taught me to pray in pictures, imagining the answer. She inspired me to be creative in even the most mundane of endeavours. She made concrete a conviction of God's providence, as I read of the tapestry that God was at work weaving in her life. Would that I had such a heart for people, such an open door to the lost and searching. Rest with Christ, Edith. Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter God's peace. Continue reading

That sounds more like a sermon title, and I know better than to preach. I can simply tell what I see. Trees budding. Robins eating from my bird feeder, a gray squirrel gleaning the castoffs. Chickadees stealing the bluebird house, early tenants. Grass stirring from winter slumber. Air wafting into my study hinting of warmer climes, a down payment on Spring. From my window on Creation, good seems on the move. "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good," says Peter. That, however, is a long war, and my contribution pitiable. I have a long rap sheet. In some way or another, I have broken every commandment. Both tablets. I have explanations, rationalizations, and defenses, but in the end my fingerprints are all over. I am a repeat offender. And there are witnesses to my crimes. And yet even in me good is on the move. I am arrested and booked by love, and there is One beyond me who inhabits my smallish efforts, my "working out of salvation." You can look at the world and see absence, or you can look at it and see presence. I see presence, and that is grace. And yet evil --- whether the vapidity of what passes for entertainment or the offense that marches through the statistics we read in the newspaper --- sometimes makes me hover over absence, pausing to complain, like grizzled Habakkuk, who cries out "Violence! and you will not save?," who wags his finger at God and says "Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?" By His grace, not by me, I move on. I see presence. My mother always told me to "be good." I can't be good. I belong to the cult of me. My good is undercut by the desperate hope that someone will catch me in the act. Filthy rags is what I have. But when I consider me, when I contrast the feebleness of me with the all-sufficiency of Him, I have to smile. Oswald Chambers calls it "divine hilarity," Frederick Buechner calls it the "comedy of grace." I have a permanent inner smile, and my failings only broaden that smile. The other day I took my first ride with my teenage daughter at the wheel. I had warned her that I was prone to being nervous, as I had never ridden with her driving, and could be impatient. Still, she wanted to drive. When we screeched to a halt in our driveway, I turned to her and said, "Did I do OK?" She said, "Yeah, you did OK, Dad." That's grace. Salvation. Working it out with fear and trembling. Divine hilarity. God working in me for his good pleasure. When I'm nearly overcome by evil, I hold in my mind that image from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The seemingly eternal winter world of Narnia is about to recede, and yet evil still is ever-present. "Aslan is on the move," the Beaver says. And then Lewis says this: And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning—either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in his inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realise that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer. And then there is faithful Sam at the end of the Lord of the Rings, looking up from his bed at the towering figure of Gandalf smiling over him, saying, "Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happening to the world?” What's happening? Wheat and tares growing up side by side, that's what. Evil flourishing in the midst of good, for a season. But it won't always be. Aslan is on the move. The last move. The last battle. The end of the last war. "You did OK, Dad." Thank God. Continue reading

While you are waiting for the next house concert (more info on that real soon), you can enjoy an upcoming adoption benefit concert --- a threesome with local artists Christa Wells and Nicole Witt, as well as Nashville artist Shelly Moore. Some friends of friends, Matt and Lisa Harmon, are currently moving through the long process of adopting a child. And to do so, they are looking for support, as adoption (particularly international adoption) can be very expensive. One of the ways they are doing this is through this adoption benefit concert. Christa Wells and Nicole Witt will be playing new music, which they have just been recording over the past weeks in Nashville, and Shelly Moore will be playing too. Matt plays guitar for Christa, so this was a very natural way for their family to bring great music to people, while also raising support to bring home a child from China. You can check out he Harmon's adoption blog here: www.harmonadoption.com. You can register for the concert (which is donation only) here: www.harmonadoption.eventbrite.com. Check out and pass along the flyer below. Let some folks know about this great way to support fellow members of the Body of Christ as well as the cause of adoption. Continue reading

In Robert MacFarlane's epic compendium of journeys on foot, The Old Ways, he observes that maps of the Holy Land and West Bank made by the Israelis (or, before that, the British) "each had its own colonial biases of self-interest and misreading." No doubt cartographers face numerous decisions about what to include or exclude, the relative importance of detail, and the value of notation. It would be inevitable, I suppose, that each would bring to the task their own predispositions. Their maps are filtered through their minds and their own presuppositions about reality, through "legends" true and untrue. Naming is, after all, an important and God-instituted means of our knowing and taking dominion over Creation, of obeying the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28 and 2:15, to "fill the earth and subdue it," to "till it and keep it." As theologian Loren Wilkinson reminds us, these twin verses both state in unequivocal terms the rule of man over nature and the role of man as servant of nature: humankind is the ruler of Creation not for self-interest but to help bring to fulfillment all of its potential. That humble rule is marked by a sympathetic "naming." God brings the animals to Adam so that he can exercise his rule by naming each animal. To name them, he must know them. He must have observed their unique characteristics and given them a now unknowable name, one fitting them, one they could grow into. Though we are not told of it, surely Adam also named the plants and trees of his garden, the places where he walked. He was, indeed, the first cartographer, the first taxonomist. So, we come by naming honestly. We make maps. They make us. They are our way of taking dominion. To leave that task to professional cartographers is to abandon our own place-making and, ultimately, to neglect our role to rule over what God has entrusted us. The developers of my small puzzle-piece of suburbia named its streets proper English words fitting its 1970s Williamsburg architecture, names like Winthrop and Gainsborough. They no doubt sought to market the development in part via its courts and lanes, providing an illusion that one was buying into a quaint, English village. I live in the map of their making, one that I have to adhere to for sake of public clarity, so the postal service can find me, so you can find me. And yet I don't believe its the only or best way to map the place I call home. MacFarlane walks the hills of Palestine with his friend Raja, using Raja's "map in the head," one signposted by personal memories and references. Raja made his own hand-drawn map as well, one marked by pictures and event-captions, like "Where Penny and Raja came under gunfire, "Where I found a dinosaur footprint," or "Where Aziz picked up the unexploded missile." MacFarlane is reminded of his walk on the English moor with Anne Campbell and her similar event-mapping: "Where the dragonfly had laid its wings out to dry." "Where the eagle had preened." Each notation bears a rich association with a unique spot, a Global Positioning System of personal observation. I too have a map in my head. There's "Where my children played in the rain," as I remember my then small ones splashing in water from a Summer shower. Or "Daisy's house," for the good-humored golden retriever that greets me as I round the corner. There's the" Last Lonely House," where in the wee morning hours a woman sits alone at a breakfast table, "Pooh-Sticks Bridge," where my stroller-bound son watched a sometimes trickling, sometimes rushing stream. Kill Devil Hill. Raccoon tree. Mockingbird sings. Albino fox crossing. The Three Trees (all that is left of the old couple's home). The Forest where the Fire burned. The Gutter Geese. Silent Chimes. Where I fell over a tree root. Cactus Garden. Pink house. (Thank God, no missiles or gunfire.) It's all there, in the map in my head. I even wrote it down. By doing so, I better know my place. When I talk to my wife or children, we have some of these markers in common, a shared legend, a common story. I might say "I saw the raccoon today," and they see that vine covered tree, or "over by the The Three Trees," and they know the place, the old house replaced by new homes, the forest cleared, the three trees the still visible reminders of another, a couple and their life. One day, no doubt, we'll leave this rude Garden, and you won't find me out walking here. My then grown children may return, find the map I've drawn, or summon up the one in their mind, and remember. The impressions I've made may summon up the past in a way that grounds them and propels them onward toward their own place-making. The map in their minds may just help them find their way. Continue reading

Many years ago I wrote a short bit of memoir --- probably no more than 600 words --- about an evening walk with my best friend of 14 on the night of the day my father died. I recall writing something about how we lay on top of my father's station wagon, under a star-punctured sky, as we awkwardly tried to say something to each other, and then, concluding that we couldn't, did what we always did: we walked. What I wrote about that night probably wasn't profound, and yet it seemed that way when I wrote it. That remembrance seemed to capture the experience in a way I have been unable to since. Unfortunately, I lost what I wrote, and I have never been able to reproduce it. It was a very little "death," of course, compared to my larger loss, and yet still I lament the loss. At least one good contribution of post-modernism has been the attention to narrative, to the stories that we all live in and out of. For the disenfranchised, it may be a narrative of loss; for elites, a narrative of power and, yet, soul-gnawing hollowness. For me, it could have been just a narrative of loss and the fallout of loss in the life of a young man, but by God's grace that story took a different turn. To use Frederick Buchner's Gospel trinity, it was a tragedy undone by the comedy of God's grace, one which continues to hold out the (true) fairy tale of resurrection and restoration. That's a story I share with Buechner, one he has spent his whole life pondering. He summed it up like this: "The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are just as the glad and gracious things will too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead. It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later." So, I am grateful to have a story to share, one that will stay with me always, one in which is hidden the seeds of new life. I can say "Once upon a time. . ." and have something to say. The alternative is painful to consider. On that fateful day when the Israelites abandoned the worship of God and asked Aaron to make a golden calf for them to worship, God warned Moses that "Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book" (Ex. 32:23). This "book" is God's reality, the story He is telling. It's a reality referred to variously throughout scripture as "the book of the living" (Ps. 69:28), "the book" (Dan. 12:1), "names. . . written in heaven," (Lk. 10:20), and "the book of life" (Phil. 4:3). The point: There is one Author of life. There is one story. If you aren't part of this tale, you are lost. You have no story. Now that is frightening. To lose your own story is not a little death but a big one, a negation of life. And it need not be. Because this is a story which you can opt into, to which you are invited. Imagine that: characters who in some mysterious way actually get to participate in the story, who can stand up on the page and address themselves to the author, who, incredibly enough, can by their petitions move the pen, shape the story. At 14 I had little notion that there was any larger story being told that involved my life, that I had any significant part. My father died. I did not know what to do or say about that. I went back to school. I worked. I looked for acceptance. I didn't know what it meant. Isn't that true of so much that happens to us? Yet, as you get older, you get glimpses of the larger narrative, of a God who imagined, made, and saved and who will deliver and remake and restore, who will tie all the subplots together in one final resolution, who will one day finally close the book, and say. . . "They all lived happily ever after." And we will. Will you? Continue reading

Tomorrow night (Saturday), we'll welcome Sara Beth Geoghegan back to Raleigh for a concert with fellow singer-songwriter Jessica Campbell. Don't come to my house! It's at the bext best thing, North Raleigh's wonderfully communal Sola Coffee. Sara Beth's recently released record, Wrong Side of the World, still bears her trademark style: quirky, often witty lyrics of love and loss, under-girded by faith, with interesting musical arrangements. This time, though, she more often eschews the piano for guitar. All in all, the record shows musical growth and lyrical maturity--- all that you would hope for in a sophomore release. Think Sara Groves or Jill Phillips with a dose of Joni Mitchell. OK, and maybe Cyndi Lauper. Maybe the last is a stretch, but you can't smile over a Joni Mitchell record but, no matter the theme, you can smile here. Sara Beth is funny. Follow her Twitter feed and you'll see what I mean. But I digress. What you need to do is see her close up, hear her poignant, witty songs, and be treated to her funny anecdotes of life and love. Check out that humor in her latest video: It's also a treat to hear Jessica Campbell. Since I don't personally know her, let me just quote from her official bio (parentheticals are mine): "Campbell was born and raised in the one-stoplight town of Catawba, North Carolina [She's one of us!], where she grew up drinking lots of Cheerwine [That does it, I'm in] and Sun Drop (N.C.-based soft drinks); singing gospel, country and show tunes in church and in singing competitions); and belting the National Anthem at ballparks, rodeos, gyms, football stadiums and anywhere else that would have her. She attended college and graduate school at Middle Tennessee State University outside of Nashville, while continuing her musical journey—writing songs, recording, performing at Dollywood (Dolly Parton’s theme park), singing song demos, leading music at church, and touring. Along the way, she got several injections of validation, one being Best Song in the respectable USA Songwriting Competition. Another feat was getting a self-penned song cut by Gordon Mote, the 2-time Academy of Country Music Awards’ Piano Player of the Year. Around 2008, after a few years of odd jobs that included Starbucks, an RV Park, a window sales company, babysitting and cookware sales consultant, Campbell decided it was time to focus her time and energy on her music career. She’s made headway in the film/TV music arena by placing songs in ABC’s “Ugly Betty” and CBC’s (Canada) “Heartland.” Enough bio. GIve Jessica a listen: Ok, so here are the details: Date: Saturday, February 9th (this weekend) Place: Sola Coffee, 7705 Lead Mine Rd. Raleigh,(919) 803-8983 (corner of Sawmill and Leadmine, in Greystone Village Shopping Center) Time: 7:30 Cost: Nada. That's right, $0, though donations to these ladies are welcome. Other stuff to do: Eat and drink, of course. Arrive early and partake of the many good sandwiches or salads that Sola offers, hot and cold drinks, and, of course, hot mini donuts. It's a warm, inviting place to hang out! See you tomorrow! Continue reading

Some of you may have been disappointed in the Fall when we had to cancel a concert with Sara Beth Geoghegan. I'm pleased to say that she is returing to the area with her singer-songwriter friend Jessica Campbell for a concert at North Raleigh's wonderfully communal Sola Coffee. Sara Beth's recently released record, Wrong Side of the World, still bears her trademark style: quirky, often witty lyrics of love and loss, under-girded by faith, with interesting musical arrangements. This time, though, she more often eschews the piano for guitar. All in all, the record shows musical growth and lyrical maturity--- all that you would hope for in a sophomore release. Think Sara Groves or Jill Phillips with a dose of Joni Mitchell. OK, and maybe Cyndi Lauper. Maybe the last is a stretch, but you can't smile over a Joni Mitchell record but, no matter the theme, you can smile here. Sara Beth is funny. Follow her Twitter feed and you'll see what I mean. But I digress. What you need to do is see her close up, hear her poignant, witty songs, and be treated to her funny anecdotes of life and love. Check out that humor in her latest video: It's also a treat to hear Jessica Campbell. Since I don't personally know her, let me just quote from her official bio (parentheticals are mine): "Campbell was born and raised in the one-stoplight town of Catawba, North Carolina [She's one of us!], where she grew up drinking lots of Cheerwine [That does it, I'm in] and Sun Drop (N.C.-based soft drinks); singing gospel, country and show tunes in church and in singing competitions); and belting the National Anthem at ballparks, rodeos, gyms, football stadiums and anywhere else that would have her. She attended college and graduate school at Middle Tennessee State University outside of Nashville, while continuing her musical journey—writing songs, recording, performing at Dollywood (Dolly Parton’s theme park), singing song demos, leading music at church, and touring. Along the way, she got several injections of validation, one being Best Song in the respectable USA Songwriting Competition. Another feat was getting a self-penned song cut by Gordon Mote, the 2-time Academy of Country Music Awards’ Piano Player of the Year. Around 2008, after a few years of odd jobs that included Starbucks, an RV Park, a window sales company, babysitting and cookware sales consultant, Campbell decided it was time to focus her time and energy on her music career. She’s made headway in the film/TV music arena by placing songs in ABC’s “Ugly Betty” and CBC’s (Canada) “Heartland.” Enough bio. GIve Jessica a listen: Ok, so here are the details: Date: Saturday, February 9th (this weekend) Place: Sola Coffee, 7705 Lead Mine Rd. Raleigh,(919) 803-8983 (corner of Sawmill and Leadmine, in Greystone Village Shopping Center) Time: 7:30 Cost: Nada. That's right, $0, though donations to these ladies are welcome. Other stuff to do: Eat and drink, of course. Arrive early and partake of the many good sandwiches or salads that Sola offers, hot and cold drinks, and, of course, hot mini donuts. It's a warm, inviting place to hang out! See you next Saturday! Continue reading

When I walk I am conscious of the ground beneath my feet, whether asphalt or dirt, the soundscape of the city or nature, the space unfolding before me. No doubt our outer landscape has a powerful effect upon our inner landscape. Indeed, in his journal of his own walkabouts, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, Robert MacFarlane says that "[f]elt pressure, sensed texture and perceived space can work upon the body and so too among the mind, altering the textures and inclinations of thought." And so it does. Walk my suburban path, full of green lawns and mature oaks and retirees picking up newspapers on settled driveways and minivans and dog-walking masters and busy bluebirds and robins with my vision limited by the tree-scape, and I feel a deep contentedness, a sense of boundaries, roots, home, blessing, swaddled in my place, wearing my own old path in my circuit like the grooves of a oft-played LP. Jackson Browne. Running on Empty. Seventies. Groove-fatigue. Walk the desert, with unobstructed views that go on for 50 miles, trodding the paths of cowboys and indians and prospectors for gold and those on the move going west, west, west, until their feet lapped the waters of the Pacific, and I feel remarkably different. Free. Boundless. Unsettled. Possibilities, some which may have seemed foolhardy at home, loom large and realizable there, dangerous, like cacti and rattlesnakes, but not so fearful. My "why" becomes my "why not." Some even walked on the moon. They were never the same. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, described the sensation as one of "magnificent desolation," sensing the "eons of lifelessness" in that place. No doubt that overwhelming absence contributed to the deep depression, alcoholism, nervous breakdown, and divorce after his return to Earth. The moon was too boundless, space too empty. Perhaps he began to sense that he was a mere atom amongst atoms unquantifiable. When you walk where hardly any others have walked, maybe you are stymied by the difficulty of not being able to communicate an experience to people for whom that walk would be incomparable, fantastical. MacFarland concludes that, in the minds of poet-walkers like Edward Abbey, Richard Jeffries, or Thomas Hardy, "[p]aths were figured as rifts within which time might exist as pure surface, prone to weird morpholgies, uncanny origami." That all sounds so mystical, like one foot is (as Francis Schaeffer said) "firmly planted in the air." Yet sometimes the unseen world impinges. One's soul is moved. Twelve years ago I was discharged from the hospital after an emergency abdominal surgery. For about nine months thereafter, I had an irrational fear. The slightest discomfort yielded an overwhelming anxiety, a sense that I was going back into the hospital. There was nothing wrong with me, and yet I could not escape it. I prayed. I read scripture. I even took a few anti-anxiety pills. But the thing that yielded the best result was to simply walk, and walk, and walk. I settled into a deep routine where the only thing I had to focus on was putting one foot in front of another, footfall after footfall. Eventually my mind rested, my spirit calmed by the mundane dependability of the unfolding landscape, birdsong, wind murmur, and low rumble of the city. And then, the worry was gone. Somewhere along the way, I let it go. Walking gave dimension to my prayers, gave topography to my spirit. Trust God. Keep walking. Follow the cloud, the star, the inner voice that bids. In the early morning dark, when alone, pray out loud. Pray loud. Cry out to God if you need to. Be the widow pestering the judge until an answer comes, until God comes, until rocks cry out and trees clap their hands, until the road bends upward before you and heaven comes down. Take dominion over the earth. Till it and keep it. Walk on until you meet God coming. Just keep moving. Continue reading

Some of you may have been disappointed in the Fall when we had to cancel a concert with Sara Beth Geoghegan. I'm pleased to say that she is returing to the area with her singer-songwriter friend Jessica Campbell for a concert at North Raleigh's wonderfully communal Sola Coffee. Sara Beth's recently released record, Wrong Side of the World, still bears her trademark style: quirky, often witty lyrics of love and loss, under-girded by faith, with interesting musical arrangements. This time, though, she more often eschews the piano for guitar. All in all, the record shows musical growth and lyrical maturity--- all that you would hope for in a sophomore release. Think Sara Groves or Jill Phillips with a dose of Joni Mitchell. OK, and maybe Cyndi Lauper. Maybe the last is a stretch, but you can't smile over a Joni Mitchell record but, no matter the theme, you can smile here. Sara Beth is funny. Follow her Twitter feed and you'll see what I mean. But I digress. What you need to do is see her close up, hear her poignant, witty songs, and be treated to her funny anecdotes of life and love. Check out that humor in her latest video: It's also a treat to hear Jessica Campbell. Since I don't personally know her, let me just quote from her official bio (parentheticals are mine): "Campbell was born and raised in the one-stoplight town of Catawba, North Carolina [She's one of us!], where she grew up drinking lots of Cheerwine [That does it, I'm in] and Sun Drop (N.C.-based soft drinks); singing gospel, country and show tunes in church and in singing competitions); and belting the National Anthem at ballparks, rodeos, gyms, football stadiums and anywhere else that would have her. She attended college and graduate school at Middle Tennessee State University outside of Nashville, while continuing her musical journey—writing songs, recording, performing at Dollywood (Dolly Parton’s theme park), singing song demos, leading music at church, and touring. Along the way, she got several injections of validation, one being Best Song in the respectable USA Songwriting Competition. Another feat was getting a self-penned song cut by Gordon Mote, the 2-time Academy of Country Music Awards’ Piano Player of the Year. Around 2008, after a few years of odd jobs that included Starbucks, an RV Park, a window sales company, babysitting and cookware sales consultant, Campbell decided it was time to focus her time and energy on her music career. She’s made headway in the film/TV music arena by placing songs in ABC’s “Ugly Betty” and CBC’s (Canada) “Heartland.” Enough bio. GIve Jessica a listen: Ok, so here are the details: Place: Sola Coffee, 7705 Lead Mine Rd. Raleigh,(919) 803-8983 (corner of Sawmill and Leadmine, in Greystone Village Shopping Center) Time: 7:30 Cost: Nada. That's right, $0, though donations to these ladies are welcome. Other stuff to do: Eat and drink, of course. Arrive early and partake of the many good sandwiches or salads that Sola offers, hot and cold drinks, and, of course, hot mini donuts. It's a warm, inviting place to hang out! See you next Saturday! Continue reading

Don't consider this a best of list. That would be presumptuous and impossible anyway, given the element of subjectivity involved. But these are the records from 2012 that I keep coming back to, that seem to offer something deeper than mere ear candy. What I am amazed at is how little of what I listen to actually sticks; most is, sadly, flash in the pan. These will stick. (Note that they are in no particular order.) A Creation Liturgy, Gungor. I nominate this record for the best worship album of all time, and I don't even usually like worship albums! The musicianship, the lyrics, and the beauty simply compel worship. There is rock, a classical guitar solo, a traditional hymn, and much more, a rich palette of songs that are stirring in their energy. I only wish I could have been at one of the live shows this album is taken from. If you want to see what I mean, just listen to Track 2, "Heaven," in its entirety. It's excellent, which is what our worship should be but which, sadly, so often fails to be. Two powerful poetry readings are amazing, like speed preaching. I'm blessed by it all. Release Me, Barbara Streisand. What can be said? Streisand has released 60 albums since 1963 and done far more besides. These 11 tracks, previously unreleased, were the "throwaways" from those many recording sessions. The thing about it is, Streisand's crumbs are food for the gods. There's not a bad track here, from Jimmy Webb's "Didn't We" to the touching rendition of Randy Newman's "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today," with Newman on the piano. On several tracks there are snippets of dialogue between Streisand and a musician or recording engineer. She's witty, funny, and probably quite the diva, but she's also an amazing singer. I love the crumbs. That's Why God Made the Radio, The Beach Boys. While inconsistent, a much anticipated 50th Anniversary reunion of the still living originators of tunes such as "Help Me Rhonda" and "Fun, Fun, Fun" finally came together. While the tour was short-lived, ultimately shut down by Mike Love, who has continued to tour under The Beach Boys moniker as mostly a nostalgia act, the reunion did produce this record, its songs made memorable by the contributions of the fragile genius of Brain Wilson. There is a bittersweet feel to the project, in its best moments hearkening back to Pet Sounds, and yet such writing seems closer to reality, somehow resonating more than the buoyant likes of "Fun, Fun, Fun" or "Good Vibrations." The closer, "Summer's Gone," about says it all: "Summer’s gone/ It’s finally sinking in/ One day begins/ Another ends/ I live them all and back again." With each new album, I always think that Brian Wilson is done, and yet he keeps surprising me. May God grant him many more years. Life Is People, Bill Fay. I think every reviewer of this album by this highly regarded 69-year old English singer-songwriter captures both the humility of Fay in light of his understated brilliance and his spirituality. He reminds me of Nick Drake without his tortured soul. And yet no one seems to pick up on the specifically Christian spirituality that permeates his lyrics. There's Jesus's propitiation for sin: "Every city brawl, every fistfight/ Every bullet from a gun/ Is written upon the palms of the holy one" ("There Is a Valley"); the hope of Heaven: "Ain't so far away, the healing day/ Coming to stay, the healing day" ("The Healing Day") and "I'm waiting for the city of God/ Yeah I'm waiting for the city of God/ When was is will be what was/ Waiting for the city of God" ("City of Dreams"); and a clsing prayer of thankfulness, like a benediction those close to him: "Thank you Lord, for giving life to me/ a river so wide, flowing from you and through me" ("Thank You Lord"). Maybe the state of biblical literacy is so low that reviewers don't even know how to express what he is saying and yet are deeply attracted to the clear-eyed hope of which he sings. Regardless, Bill Fay is one artist whose "little songs" (his words) should be heard. Leonard, the Lonely Astronaut, Andrew Osenga. As I wrote a review just for this album, I cannot do better than sum it up as I did in that blog post: "This is likely the richest album both lyrically and musically that Andrew Osenga has launched. There is a quirkiness in his character, and yet there is profundity in what the man has to say. This record just might resonate more broadly than in just the CCM community, as it touches on many universals and eschews the hackneyed phrases that abound in CCM marketed music. In fact, it strikes me as "acoustically-grounded, lyrically thoughtful, and spiritually provocative," just the kind of music I would have wanted to find and support in my Silent Planet Records days. And yet who needs a record label anymore? Leonard was funded by 365 fans via Kickstarter, and the set, a mock homemade spaceship, built by supporters. That's a testament to community and a new, broader sense of the importance of patronage." All that I said is still true. Give this unlikely record, one that could have gone oh-so-wrong a listen, to see what is oh-so-right. Palindrome Hunches, Neil Halstead. Mojave Three frontman Halstead makes folky, dreamy records, a little like The Innocence Mission. If you don't like the latter, you won't like him, but if you do, you may be all over it. He lacks the undergirding Christian vision of TIM, but he makes up for it in wit. The record is very British, welcoming, warm, and lyrically indecipherable much of the time, allowing space for your own meanings --- in other words, it's "shoegazer" folk. Even the title, "palindrome," meaning a word or line which means the same read backwards as well as forwards, hints that something is up here. You listen. You figure it out. Silver and Gold, Sufjan Stevens. I normally wouldn't include a Christmas album on my favorites list, but Sufjan's Christmas albums are worth playing all year long. Not that every song is a keeper, but there is so much here that you can assemble two good CDs of hymns, carols, original tunes, and more, all rather intimate and homemade, but it works. There are moments of sheer beauty, as in "Justice Delivers Its Death," or in his arrangement of "Joy to the World." I think the point of the whole lot of it is the heavy weigh that Christmas must carry --- sacred and religious --- but the sweet essence of the celebration, the Incarnation, shines through in the hymns and carols. And maybe that's his point. So, that's it for 2012. It's sad that in all the popular music rendered I could only come up with seven albums that will stick with me. I leave you with two videos, one by Bill Fay, the other by Sufjan Stevens, that were simply moving --- beautiful songs and simple images. Enjoy! Continue reading

I've been a bad, bad little blogger. My last post was dated December 16th, nearly two weeks ago, and my (two) fans have been clamoring for more verbiage to tickle their ears and give them pause to reflect, so I have decided to comply with their wishes. But if you're looking for another brooding bromide of brilliance here, you may wish to reconsider, since after over 900 posts and the intervening eight Christmases, I'm fresh out. (And yes, I know "bromide" isn't really the right word, but sometimes alliteration wins out.) Life. Today, we celebrated our annual Christmas lunch with my extended family. We pay close attention to the time at which such events are scheduled. This one was slated for noon, and you must be there at noon or you'll be licking scraps from emptied serving bowls. At 11:45, some of the men have to be tethered to their recliners, drooling, like rabid dogs, an unnatural posture for men and recliners as men seem fashioned by their Creator to perfectly reside in recliners, hands on their universal remotes. Once untethered, the food is consumed in a leisurely 10 minutes, and then the men return to sofa and recliners and take up something, anything with pixels, on ESN (the Eternal Sports Network). I ate ham, green beans, sweet potato casserole, deviled eggs, potato salad, strawberry cobbler, pumpkin pie, a chocolate cover cherry, coconut meringue pie, and. . . and I think that's all. I'm hungry again, though. We don't partake of alcohol at our family get togethers. We don't need to. We have my nearly 90-year old aunt, who is hard of hearing, loud, bigoted, and opinionated, a wonderful aunt with a zest for life. She had her hair done just for the event. She's perfectly fine unless she starts talking about the boys that play on top of her house and play loud "boom-boom" music at all hours, or she starts talking about the subject of interracial marriage. She engaged the latter topic recently as we dined at a nice restaurant, and it was a wonder we weren't ejected. She's loud. But as I said, we don't need alcohol to liven up things. We have her. I want to come clean right now. I rear-ended another car recently. No one was hurt. I was only going about 10 miles and hour, which is like being stopped for someone who drives a Mini Cooper S. The other gentleman was very nice about it. I was mad as h-e-double-hockey-sticks at myself. I think I did about $25 worth of damage to his car. Mine suffered $7000 damage. It's the first at fault two-car collision I have had in my long driving career. I've been driving since I was seven, first illegally (with my aunt, the one who is bigoted and loud and my favorite) and then mostly legally. I mean, I have had a few accidents, but mostly I have them alone it seems. I backed into a mail box post, into a car in my driveway, into my unopened garage door, and maybe a few other things. This time I was doing some other really important things in the car rather than paying attention to the road, like checking my IPhone, because you know you have to keep up with emails and such, immediately, or you may get behind in life, and they are all so very important. Focus! So, I just wanted to get that out there, just in case you think I'm practically perfect, Poppins-like, or something. I think it was God-ordained. Today, I woke up thinking of buying a new car. There are few more pleasurable moments in a man's life than buying a new car, or a boat, something big with an engine that makes a lot of racket. One of my friends buys a new car like every six months. Because, you know, new cars get old, quick, and the new car smells wears off, and you need to do something about it, so if you can, you buy a new car. And if you can't afford that, you buy a bigger TV. My brother-in-law just retired after 40 years of working. He's going to stay home and bother my sister. I expect him to buy a new TV, maybe a 70-inch model, with a universal remote that looks like one of those "recorders" from Star Trek. Beam me up, Scotty. I've been walking a lot here, on the eve of Christmas. I have to, as I have been eating a lot. People keep sending us food in the mail. I'm trying to eat as much of it as I can but really, people, I can only handle so much. The other night I ate 90% of a bag of some sugary chocolate covered pretzel kind of thing that one of my legal assistants gave me that was supposedly made by kids at a local elementary school. It was my charitable duty. I woke up this morning and could barely move. The other night I worked my way through a 10,000 gallon tin of butter, cheese, and caramel popcorn that someone sent. The next morning I woke up and my feet would barely fit in my shoes. I need to stop this. Oh, the things we do for Christmas. My aunt called me six times yesterday. The boys are on the roof again. That 'bong-bong' music. I think I probably should buy a new car, come to think of it. I want a big one this time, with leather seats that I can easily slide my ample backside around in, making ingress and egress easy, and I want a big attenna on it, one that whips back and forth when I come to a screeching stop at a traffic light. I want a car that stands up when you hit the accelerator. And I want a jarring sound system that can make short work of the rap music thumping form the car one lane over. Is that cool, or what? I also took off work for a few days and put up the Christmas lights. I put white lights in careful geometric patterns, in perfect concentric circles, on the trees in my front yard. Lots of them. Actually, I just threw them on the trees, haphazardly. My wife helped. At first she tried to help me do it somewhat carefully, seeking full coverage, but then we gave up and simply threw them all over the branches. They look pretty good. I used white lights in front so as not to offend the neighbors, and real Christmas lights in back, where only we can see them, you know, the colored ones. Wow, it looks great. I even put in some twinkling ones, in the backyard of course. In my piece of suburbia colored lights are taboo. Forget about the giant lighted candles in the yard. Growing up, we put orange-lit candles in our windows, so I come by it naturally. We figured out later that the candle manufacturers put orange bulbs in the candles because nobody wants them (except us) and so they sell more bulbs of other colors. We eventually got blue candles. We showed them. Ha! I put candles in the windows too. Every night I turn all 7000 of them on, and off, at least it feels like I do. It takes forever! The things we do for Christmas. Life. Some redeemed Mayan is laughing in Heaven. I wasn't prepared for the end of the world anyway. I haven't done my taxes. Grrr. Last year I got Retro Ranger Mints in my stocking, like Altoids for park rangers. I wonder what Santa will bring this year? Yesterday I battled the traffic, the 10,000 cars (I like big numbers) that were in the turn lane for the mall, just so I could eat lunch with a friend. 11:45. No wait at the restaurant. I sat down, ordered ice tea, and worked my way through a loaf of bread. After waiting 20 minutes, I received a text. He asked if we could move the location for our 12:30 lunch. 12:30??? No problem. I got nothing to do. They gave me the bread and tea free, and I walked out, navigated 10,000 more cars in exiting, and went to the shopping mall up the road, where I circled the parking lots several times looking for a narrow spot I could slide into. I made it. I was so worked up I ate another loaf of bread. I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music. I have to tell you, I have just about had enough of it, from Sufjan Stevens' "The Christmas Unicorn" to The Best of Amy Grant Christmas (I think she cut about 4000 Christmas records.) My favorite: Rosie Thomas' (a/k/a Sheila Shaputo's) three-song Christmas EP. Seriously. Wearing it out. But I'm telling you right now: On December 26th it's over. I'm going to compile a best of 2012 Christmas and consign the rest of it to digital purgatory. Next. Today, I read this: ". . . and the government shall be upon his shoulders." I'm glad for that. In all the stuff of life, I'm glad that Someone bigger than me and the smart people over me is in charge. Because I can't fix my aunt. I can't fix Christmas. I can't fix the fiscal cliff or my physical cliff. I can't stop doing stupid things like rear-ending a car. But He can fix all that. I might, however, buy both a new car and a bigger TV. My wife had the temerity to ask why I needed to buy a bigger TV. She just wants one that works. If you have to ask, you just don't understand. It's a self-evident truth. Men and TVs. Men and cars. Well, that's some of the important things I have been working on here, on the eve of Christmas. Oops. Gotta go. My aunt's calling. Merry Christmas from Outwalking. Continue reading

"'Always, everywhere, people have walked, veining the earth with paths visible and invisible, symmetrical or meandering,' writes Thomas Clark in his enduring prose-poem, 'In Praise of Walking.' It's true that once you begin to notice them, you see that the landscape is still webbed with paths and footways --- shadowing the modern-day road network, or meeting it at a slant or perpendicular. Pilgrim paths, green roads, drove roads, corpse roads, trods, leys, dykes, drongs, sarns, snickets --- say the names of the paths out loud and at speed and they become a poem or rite --- holloways, bostles, shutes, drifitways lichways, ridings, cartways, carneys, causeways, herepaths." (Robert Mcfarlane, in The Old Ways) Many was the time as a young boy that I was deposited along with my younger sister with my grandmother for a time, for a day even, no doubt my mother, then in her early Forties, exhausted from the care of two young children. We swung in a bench swing suspended from the massive arm of an oak tree, soaring dangerously high, the swing's chains slack and slapping. We chased a multitude of cats around the barn, rolled in the fall leaves, played mother-may-i on the front stoop and lawn. Inside, we watched my grandmother cook --- rolling out dough for biscuits, heaping ample amounts of lard on the counter, snapping green beans. Mostly, though, we walked. Donning her bonnet, we'd skirt the pasture, round the corner on a now impassable cartway, and walk or skip to the strawberry patch, eating our fill. Hands red with berry juice, we'd run the rest of the way, to the creek that pooled under the Southern Railway bridge, wading into the cool water as my grandmother watched from shore. Sometimes, dangerously I suppose, we'd walk a ways on the railway tracks, balancing on the rails, before turning for home, hearing the whistle of the deisel train behind us. On those walks we visited an overgrown, intriguing cemetery, its headstones all higgledy-piggledy, Seuss-like, the names on the headstones near obliterated by the wash of rain. Even then it was a graveyard in a forest, trees pressing in. We took care not to step on the graves, on the long-lost relatives laying there. Even today, they lay there, though there is no sign of their occupation. We walked. We walked through a then dry lake-bed, visiting elderly people, taking food to shut-ins. Occasionally, we traveled a dirt road, but more often we navigated a meandering footway. I took for granted our walks, and yet the wonder of discovery, of places and people, of the living and the dead, of what was and what was already past, stayed with me. While the land remains, the paths and cartways are overgrown. The dirt roads are paved, curbed and guttered. Bends were made straight. Semi-wilderness has been tamed. And yet when I go there, something of that place and of those paths, of those walks and of that wonder, remain. You don't have to read far in Robert Mcfarland's ode to walking and walkways, The Old Ways, to capture his sense of wonder in the landscape of journey. His poetic prose and ample ability to describe his surroundings are delightful. What he captures so well in this naturalistic writing is the spiritual quality of places and of the paths that link them. Citing a phrase used by ornithologist W.H. Hudson, he notes how walking such paths may lead you to "slip back out of this modern world," of how so many wanderers "spoke of the tingle of connection, of walking as seance, of voices heard along the way." There is peril as well as promise in that idea. Certainly places and the paths that connect them are more than soul-less inanimates. Given their creation by a God who made them good, who actively in Christ holds all things together, and who will one day redeem all things, as well as their trodding by those made in His image, they are imbued with His mark. Seeing a familiar oak tree now, or setting foot on the remnants of a dirt path more than 25 years after my grandmother died and more than 45 years after walking it as a child, it's difficult to call them only dirt and bark. They're carrying history. They're bearing echoes of an older story, one God is telling and into which I walked but briefly. I'm still walking. Even suburbia retains its pathways. Still, particularly for children, there is a path from here to there that doesn't involve sidewalks and streets but back yard detours and creekside trails, the faint furrowed impressions of the plowed fields that lay under backyards and forest remnants. Not everything vanishes. Bend down and touch the earth and know someone else trod there, behind horse and plow perhaps, before the pines moved in, before the hardwoods came, before I came. I know I walk among dumb inanimates. I know they do not have souls. I know better than to worship the created thing and not the Creator. And yet they are not mute. Places and the old ways that link them call out to me. They testify to glory. Isaiah the prophet gives voice to creation when he prophesies of the coming Kingdom: "For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Is. 55:12). Likewise he Psalmist also enjoins creation: "Let the rivers clap their hands, let the hills sing for joy together. . ." (Ps. 98:8). Poorly schooled as we are in spiritualizing scripture, perhaps we miss the physical reality that these words foresee: Perhaps rivers and hills and trees sing and clap even now, faintly, overcome by the din around us, by a world bearing the weight of the curse. Sometimes I think I hear them. But whether I do or not, they will not forever be still. My grandmother was a path maker, and we followed in her way. Flowers and bushes and trees were familiar neighbors to her, and had we listened we might have learned their names. I regret I did not pay attention, did not heed her introductions. Now, when I walk in an unfamiliar city, I write down street names, say them aloud to myself, fast, letting them form a poem or song if for no one but me. Even city streets sing and clap His praise. Streetlamps light up and call Him blessed. Tall buildings sway in time to His song. Old ways, even here. But then, my grandmother might say I am only imagining things. But she'd say it, I am sure, with a twinkle in her eye and, then, turn to walk. Continue reading

While there are certainly cities and towns in the United States that have experienced decline, no major city has experienced such rapid decline as that seen in the last decades by the once prosperous city of Detroit. With a large land area of nearly 140 square miles, its blight is stultifying in its immensity: 30 percent of the city is vacant land, there are 90,000 abandoned buildings, including massive automotive plants, 25 percent of the population has left in just one decade, it's the most violent city in the United States. And the tragic list of statistics goes on. Many come to gawk, to tour the ruins, taking a morbid curiosity or attaching a certain weird sense of hipness to the decline. Not so with Mark Binelli, the author of the recently released Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis. Having grown up in Detroit, his is a more sympathetic telling of its woes. In 2009 he moved into the city and settled in to walk, bike, talk, and gawk --- to, in his words, ask "what happens to a once-great place, after it has been used up and discarded?" More than that, he says "I wanted to know if my hometown could be saved," and, if Detroit could be saved (though he might not put it this way), if we all can be saved. Binelli is a good writer, powerfully sustaining a narrative of ruin yet ultimately failing in finding a sustaining basis for hope. There are several mini-narratives at play in Binelli's book, all well-known to those who have studied the city and its decline, and the author does a good job of bringing these stories home by recounting the particulars of people and place. For example, to give us a sense of the kind of violence that is routine, he recounts the story of the gruesome murder of David Morgan, Jr., 61, murdered and dismembered by two twenty-something cocaine dealers as a message to other drug dealers eager to move in on their turf. He finds plenty to write about under the heading of political corruption and mismanagement, from the bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement, cronyism, and sex scandals of Kwame Kilpatrick to the financially-challenged city council President Charles Pugh. And weird art? He ventures into the ruins of the old Packard plant to see an installation by artist Scott Hocking, which consisted of empty television boxes (found on site) on top of exposed columns. Scrappers (scavengers of old buildings), firefighters, arsonists, and washed-up auto union workers are just some of the characters that people the rest of his tale --- to the extent you begin to ask where the "normal" people live (if they do) or where there is a real community, intact neighborhoods. Detroit seems to bear not only physical ruin but a human ruin with very little in the way of hope. The lingering question is whether it is but a harbinger of Ameircan decline. But perhaps the author just didn't know where to look. He could have talked to Lisa Johansen, Executive Director of the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation (CDC2), an organization staffed by Christians who live and work in the community, who work on bringing resources for housing, job skills, education, and community-building back into the neighborhood where they all live. Surely there are other churches, non-profits, and volunteer organizations making a difference. But they're not recounted here. Where in fact are the people of faith in Binelli's tale? Did he deem them irrelevant? It is curious to read such a powerfully descriptive story that entirely omits any reference to the spiritual temperature of the city. Binelli evinces no hostility toward religion or the church, but its absence makes incomplete his telling. Underlying the mini-narratives of the author's book is an unspoken, underlying non-narrative: one of meaninglessness, of a decline and despair which is only temporarily relieved by an existential glimmer of hope, one he finds difficult to sustain. In fact, in a book of 288 pages, that glimmer of hope he allows himself bleeds out, finally, in only the last nine pages, a telling indicator of its ephemeral quality. In another continent, in another time, another people saw decline. Some of that story is told in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. At the heart of Jerusalem's ruin was a people who were spiritually bankrupt. Casting off God, they were abandoned, for a time, to captivity in Babylon, taken from their lands, their city destroyed. And yet not finally abandoned. A broken man, Nehemiah repented of both his sin and that of a nation and cried out to God for help. In the end, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt in 52 days, much to the surprise and chagrin of the surrounding peoples, and a people came home. None of this is to suggest a particular judgment of Detroit or that Detroiters or Americans are God's chosen people. It is, however, to suggest that the narrative that underlies all others is a spiritual one, a theology of ruin from a people who have abandoned God and forsaken what is good, true, and beautiful, a fallenness that manifests itself in violence, corrupt politicians, unbridled greed, racism, and moral degeneracy. Deeper still, though, is a narrative of grace, of a God who can heal and rebuild a city and its people, who can even rebuild a nation committed to Him. Neither the Government nor capitalists can save Detroit. God can. Detroit doesn't need post-modern artists who have no basis for a sustaining hope, who have no answer for hopelessness. It needs a city on its knees. It needs people committed to living, praying, and working alongside its people, building communities that look upward for hope and move outward in love. Now that would be a story. That's a theology for the ruins. That's the place to be. Continue reading

While there are certainly cities and towns in the United States that have experienced decline, no major city has experienced such rapid decline as that seen in the last decades by the once prosperous city of Detroit. With a large land area of nearly 140 square miles, its blight is stultifying in its immensity: 30 percent of the city is vacant land, there are 90,000 abandoned buildings, including massive automotive plants, 25 percent of the population has left in just one decade, it's the most violent city in the United States. And the tragic list of statistics goes on. Many come to gawk, to tour the ruins, taking a morbid curiosity or attaching a certain weird sense of hipness to the decline. Not so with Mark Binelli, the author of the recently released Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis. Having grown up in Detroit, his is a more sympathetic telling of its woes. In 2009 he moved into the city and settled in to walk, bike, talk, and gawk --- to, in his words, ask "what happens to a once-great place, after it has been used up and discarded?" More than that, he says "I wanted to know if my hometown could be saved," and, if Detroit could be saved (though he might not put it this way), if we all can be saved. Binelli is a good writer, powerfully sustaining a narrative of ruin yet ultimately failing in finding a sustaining basis for hope. There are several mini-narratives at play in Binelli's book, all well-known to those who have studied the city and its decline, and the author does a good job of bringing these stories home by recounting the particulars of people and place. For example, to give us a sense of the kind of violence that is routine, he recounts the story of the gruesome murder of David Morgan, Jr., 61, murdered and dismembered by two twenty-something cocaine dealers as a message to other drug dealers eager to move in on their turf. He finds plenty to write about under the heading of political corruption and mismanagement, from the bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement, cronyism, and sex scandals of Kwame Kilpatrick to the financially-challenged city council President Charles Pugh. And weird art? He ventures into the ruins of the old Packard plant to see an installation by artist Scott Hocking, which consisted of empty television boxes (found on site) on top of exposed columns. Scrappers (scavengers of old buildings), firefighters, arsonists, and washed-up auto union workers are just some of the characters that people the rest of his tale --- to the extent you begin to ask where the "normal" people live (if they do) or where there is a real community, intact neighborhoods. Detroit seems to bear not only physical ruin but a human ruin with very little in the way of hope. The lingering question is whether it is but a harbinger of Ameircan decline. But perhaps the author just didn't know where to look. He could have talked to Lisa Johansen, Executive Director of the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation (CDC2), an organization staffed by Christians who live and work in the community, who work on bringing resources for housing, job skills, education, and community-building back into the neighborhood where they all live. Surely there are other churches, non-profits, and volunteer organizations making a difference. But they're not recounted here. Where in fact are the people of faith in Binelli's tale? Did he deem them irrelevant? It is curious to read such a powerfully descriptive story that entirely omits any reference to the spiritual temperature of the city. Binelli evinces no hostility toward religion or the church, but its absence makes incomplete his telling. Underlying the mini-narratives of the author's book is an unspoken, underlying non-narrative: one of meaninglessness, of a decline and despair which is only temporarily relieved by an existential glimmer of hope, one he finds difficult to sustain. In fact, in a book of 288 pages, that glimmer of hope he allows himself bleeds out, finally, in only the last nine pages, a telling indicator of its ephemeral quality. In another continent, in another time, another people saw decline. Some of that story is told in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. At the heart of Jerusalem's ruin was a people who were spiritually bankrupt. Casting off God, they were abandoned, for a time, to captivity in Babylon, taken from their lands, their city destroyed. And yet not finally abandoned. A broken man, Nehemiah repented of both his sin and that of a nation and cried out to God for help. In the end, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt in 52 days, much to the surprise and chagrin of the surrounding peoples, and a people came home. None of this is to suggest a particular judgment of Detroit or that Detroiters or Americans are God's chosen people. It is, however, to suggest that the narrative that underlies all others is a spiritual one, a theology of ruin from a people who have abandoned God and forsaken what is good, true, and beautiful, a fallenness that manifests itself in violence, corrupt politicians, unbridled greed, racism, and moral degeneracy. Deeper still, though, is a narrative of grace, of a God who can heal and rebuild a city and its people, who can even rebuild a nation committed to Him. Neither the Government nor capitalists can save Detroit. God can. Detroit doesn't need post-modern artists who have no basis for a sustaining hope, who have no answer for hopelessness. It needs a city on its knees. It needs people committed to living, praying, and working alongside its people, building communities that look upward for hope and move outward in love. Now that would be a story. That's a theology for the ruins. That's the place to be. Continue reading

I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall--- what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do. ("I Go Down to the Shore," by Mary Oliver, in A Thousand Mornings) The economy of a poem is its virtue. Every word of a well-crafted one must count so much that the acres of blank space on the page pour out meaning as well, rich in its absence of words. At least it does with Mary Oliver's poems, poems which are deceptively simple yet profound. So she goes down to the shore. So do we all. This is not a going just to walk, to gaze on beauty, to enjoy the sea air. She is going to the edge and staring out into Creation with questions: Why? What now? And so I have been down to the shore, the edge of the city, to a forest in the early morning, alone. Last year, in April, I went to a nearby state park alone on several mornings in the space of several months. These were not nature walks, in the sense that I was there to observe the forest, the river, the bird life and fauna. I was there to be alone and hear and see the regularity, the mundanity of a rock and stream and forest that pre-existed me and will live on after me, that will keep on. My mother was dying. I walked a long sentence, stretching out the length of the path, a sentence saying what shall --- what should I do? And the ancient river and stones and trees said, as they always say, Excuse me, I have work to do. In her essay, The Quotidian Mysteries, Kathleen Norris reminds us that the "divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life," that "it is in the ordinary, the here-and-now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is 'renewed in the morning'" (Ps. 90:5). And so I walk. I do the mundane work of putting one foot in front of another even when that is all I can do. I dig a path with my question. Some questions have to be taken out and walked, given space in which to percolate. The rhythm of footsteps, like the beat of my heart, answers my restlessness. What should I do? Some have said that poetic meter --- even the common iambic pentameter of so many poems and songs --- originates in the bodily rhythm of arms and legs in motion. Even more, in the beat of our own hearts. So when we walk, we hear music, we make music, reconnect with the song at the heart of Creation. We consider the barely perceptible rhythms of a natural world whose work is excruciatingly slow: trees inch upward; maples and sweet gums shed their leaves reluctantly, oaks resist; rocks are sculpted ever so gently by wind and water and their ceaseless caress. Excuse me, I have work to do, they say. In the end, when I go down to the shore, when I step out on the earth and walk, I am reminded of the God who made me, of Christ who holds all things together, of the Spirit who works unceasingly, who stirs my heart to worship. Walking becomes liturgy, a regular path to praise. My breath, my heart, my stride, my motion --- they all remind me of my creatureliness, and that of my Creator whose image I bear. And then, like today, something enters that rhythm, that mundanity of my existence --- a dog, smiling, approaches; a gargantuan leaf flutters down and catches in my wife's unsuspecting hand, as if God placed it there; a lone white birch tree sways slightly against a sharp blue sky (look up, it says); the gnarled roots of a what seems a prehistoric tree clutch the river bank; leaves crunch underfoot, announcing our coming. Skipping rocks in the riverbed, I accidently plunge my foot, boot and all, under water. I laugh. What shall --- what should I do? It is God who answers: Excuse me, I have work to do. As do I. Continue reading

Does a snippet of an author's personal story really help you understand and interpret the author's words? Does it make you more interested in what the author writes? Apparently publishers think so, for they keep pumping out nonfiction books that, whatever the ostensible subject, are light on serious research and heavy on Me. This is a regrettable trend on two accounts. It conflates experience with understanding, as if dropping by for a visit or meeting a local were all it took to become an expert. And it produces book as ephemeral as magazine articles, hardly worth keeping on the shelf. (Marc Levinson, in "Casting Copper As Victim," in The Wall Street Journal, October 13-14, 2012) Levinson's comment about a book he was reviewing echoes with a sentiment expressed several years ago by Garrison Keillor. Asked to be a poetry judge, and after reading piles of bad poetry about mostly bad experiences, Keillor concludes that "Experience becomes literature when it no longer matters to the reader whether it's true or not." That is to say, the story is told so well that no one cares if it's really true. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of a work of nonfiction, as we expect nonfiction to be true. At least we ought to. And yet the lines are increasingly blurred in a world that has lost the sense of a truth that is true, of True Truth, that is, of a truth that corresponds to reality. People believe everything, and nothing at all, and even have no difficulty holding logically inconsistent positions. Take memoir, what you might call perspectival truth. Reading it we understand its limitations, that we are hearing one perspective on a situation, on a life. And yet as much as I enjoy the genre I often have the sense that I am being deceived for the sake of a good story, that the details of a life are embellished. I feel cheated, as I want it to be true. Given that there are some notable examples of bestsellers that turned out to be blatant falsehoods spun well, I am suspicious. I want the truth. It may be a truth limited by the author's limited experience, yet still I want the truth as far as the author knows it. But that's not the only problem. The greater problem is when people no longer care if the memoir is really true, when it doesn't really matter. Memoir becomes fiction, and we don't care because maybe we want it to be true or need it to be true. The best memoirs are the synoptic gospels. In them, Hebrew men tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, a truth superintended by the Holy Spirit and yet not dictated, a truth shaped perspectivally by their own unique personalities and yet nonetheless true. The Spirit tells the story of Jesus --- gives a memoir of His life, death, and resurrection --- and uses mere men in the telling, condescends in a fashion to their own limitations of perspective, and yet makes sure that the message is true. While our own memoirs are not so perfect, that is, God is not so involved in creating an authoritative, inerrant account of our lives, allowing our imperfections to affect the telling, we can pray we tell it straight, that God will inhabit our telling so the truth we tell is True Truth. The fact is, I want to get it straight, but I love a good story. When I'm tempted to slant the truth, to write the memoir I think I wish I had, I pray God would help me write the one I in fact have, the one He gave me. It can't get any better than that. "Jesus wept," says John, because he saw it. Cleopas saw a resurrected Jesus on the Road to Emmaus and said "did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road," because he saw Him and Luke set it down. I'm glad that's really, really true. Because if He can weep over a world gone wrong, then so can we. And if Cleopas can see a resurrected Christ, then He lives and so do we who can rejoice in our tears. Pray God we tell it straight. Continue reading

“Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. . . . Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics. When you see them you do not understand them. You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars. It is only years later that you understand.” (Niko Kazantzakias) Sometimes it is valuable to take a figurative step back and ponder the things with which we surround ourselves. Objects aren't just objects, after all. Take this seaside bookshelf, for instance, one we live around but rarely notice each time we visit a family home by the coast. I can't nor would I claim, for example, one bookend here, Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook, rank chic-lit. It begins unremarkably with "Who am I? And how, I wonder will this story end?" I can tell you. I flip over and catch the last line of a man writing "I am alone on the pier and I do care what others think as I bow my head and cry and cry and cry." Oh my. I'm glad I did not read that. Next to it stands a classic, Beryl Markham's West With the Night. A contemporary of Isak Denison (also known as Karen Blixen), Markham wrote a memoir of her three loves: horses, airplanes, and Africa. (As my wife used to say, "How much more could a girl want - a horse, an airplane, and a life in Africa?" to which, I answer, "Me!") I cannot quote the entire opening paragraph (which I almost have memorized), one of the great book beginnings, but I listen once again to the music of these first words: "How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at her loom. I should like to say, 'This is the place to start; there is none other.'" I wish I could continue. It's like singing part of the first verse of a beautiful song, only to leave off. Go read that book. I catch it in the corner of my eye and I remember sitting in a tent in Africa reading it, serenaded by the sounds of lions and hyenas, with the low musical voices of our African friends. You may not be able to read it in Africa, but read it in a place you want to remember, because you will not forget where you read it. Over a bit, letting my eyes float past The Encyclopedia of Boating (a book which has done my attempts to dock the boat no good), there is a small volume of very short stories called Asking Father, which, along with Father Calling, is dog-eared with use. These true stories of men and women were rousing 10-15 minute tales of people who encountered some difficulty which drove them to asking God for help. Prayers are answered, often in miraculous ways. Like the church that floated down the main street of a town, coming to rest at just the place which the congregation had sought to originally build it. What I liked was how these stories make real what scripture promises: that God listens to our prayers and answers them, that He listens to the smallest and weakest and least important of us as well as the big and strong and important. He listens to children. The books are timeless, really; I need them now as much as I thought my children needed them then. There's more here, of course, than just books. There are games that make you work, like Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit and Bananagrams, and games that let you rest, like Sorry or Uno. They summon up laughter as well as pouts, children stomping off to rooms after losing, arguments about words ("Get the Websters"), and the smell of popcorn still, I imagine, hanging onto lettered tiles. Farther up the shelves, there are lots of sea shells in glass jars. Some people spend an enormous amount of time at the beach stooped over picking through shells. Not me. My wife likes to do that. I pretend like I'm doing that too, even rifle through a few at times, as I don't want to rush her, but mostly I'm daydreaming, traveling down some corridor in my mind, or several, until I hear "Look at this one" and mumble "Hmmm. . . nice. Unusual." Something like that. Living in my head. I need to get out more. On the top shelf are a couple of dusty case books from the mid-1800s, cases decided by the North Carolina Supreme Court. When I tire of the beach and sun, I pull down a volume and read cases --- arguments over slaves, for example, or cartways (rights of way), contract disputes, and so on, a reminder that human nature has remained fairly constant. Sinful, that is. Lawyers live off our flawed nature. I should know. These cases give perspective, remind me that though the particulars of our lives may change, the universals of virtue and vice remain. On the one hand, pride, selfishness, and greed; on the other; humility, selflessness, and generosity. That's just one bookcase. If we went room to room here, there would be stories to tell, objects that carry the past with them, that summon up memories and people and suggest connections. I understand hoarders a bit: They can't let go, maybe because some memory or some person is attached to an object, and they fear that if the object leaves so will the memory. If so, many of my memories have left. And yet I think all the good in them will be preserved and brought to fruition one day. Reading this, you might say to me that "This is all very interesting (meaning, probably, that it's not), but what's the point?" Just this: Don't neglect the objects around you. From time to time, ponder them. Christians are called to meditate (ponder) both Word and World. Yet sometimes the World is just too big to think about. We can think better when we slow down and focus on just a few objects. On a bookcase, perhaps. On a book. On a story in a book. On a paragraph in a story in a book on a bookshelf by the sea. You never know where that will take you. Continue reading

Unfortunately, we will not be able to host Sara Beth Geoghegan for a house concert this Friday. Hopefully we'll be able to feature her at a later date. So don't show up! Continue reading