Divinest Sense

Poems Are Alive

2013-04-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

"When I plan what I'm going to say, often the words are strained no matter how brilliant they seemed when I came up with them. They're no longer fresh. It's why I write in the car. If I don't flip that poem onto the page the moment it wants to come out, it can drift away like a dream or go lifeless. Talk is alive. Moments are alive. Poems are made of talk and moments." - Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge, poemcrazy: freeing your life with words

Sometimes, I watch my friends' houses and pets while they go on vacation. It's a nice way to make a little extra money, or at least, since most of them live minutes from work instead of an hour, save some money on gas. But there's another thing I realized at my last housesitting gig: in a way, it's good for me as a writer.

There's something about being in an unfamiliar setting, and just for a weekend or so, stepping into another's life and treating it as my own, with someone else's dishes and furniture and windows. I can acclimate. I don't mind living in someone else's world for a while. And something about the unfamiliar makes me want to try new things.

Last weekend, while a friend's condo was in my care, I bought a bag of California mandarins, tiny, sweet fruits wrapped in deep orange, something I'd never thought to buy before. On Saturday morning, I added one to my breakfast. I dug my finger into the thick, soft rind, and peeled it effortlessly, letting the bright orange skin drop into my cereal bowl, a strong ceramic piece. Bright blue.

I sort of wish I'd snapped a picture of that orange and blue. The color caught my eye in its raw, bright audacity, and I thought how I might have never chosen these colors for myself. I thought about the box of dishes I have waiting in my closet for a home of their own. Simple white. Maybe I should buy some colorful bowls.

So I didn't snap a picture. Instead, I scribbled a poem.

Orange peel, blue bowl,

 Black mug (Darth Vader), 

Open balcony, clean breeze, 

Riding on the morning. 

Two dogs. None mine.  

I make my home anywhere. 

Anywhere there are 

poems and sunlight 

to capture them by.

Poems are alive. A photo can freeze time, capture color and a moment, and it can hint at feelings and story. But a poem holds moment after moment, and a well of feelings and a net of stories in just a few words. Lately, as my life changes, as I weigh decisions and feel for a change in the wind, I need poetry more than ever. When it comes to writing, I have no advice or helpful lists to dispense. I only have time and breath and little stories and lots of words.

But the thing about poetry is this: it doesn't have to resolve. Just as an excellent photo can catch a moment and maybe tell a story, a poem can frame a thing, a person, an idea, or a dream. In a sense, it goes deeper, beyond the surface of what we see.

I've heard that people don't like poetry because at some point some high school teacher forced them to reckon with great literary works and figure out what it means. Maybe instead of explaining and translating, learning to listen and experience them as the living things they are is a better way. Poems don't have to be lofty, heroic, or obscure either. The best of them put a frame around something ordinary and draw out all of its glory.

So what do I write about? A bowl, and orange rind. And home. And displacement and comfort.

It doesn't resolve or explain much. It doesn't have to.

A semi-belated contribution to TS Poetry's Book Club discussion of Poemcrazy this month. (I think this section was two weeks ago. Well then.) Find out more here!

Percolating and Such

2013-04-06T12:06:00.001-04:00

The Dry Salvages (aka: gray line on the horizon)

Some months ago, I wrote about burnout. It was part self-corrective, part re-admission of something I've known for a while. I thought maybe, as it usually goes when I hit this kind of wall, talking about it might bring a little clarity and then I'd be able to write again. Admit the failure, and the windows open.

But then my friend Janna left some wisdom in the comment box that's been sticking around for months...

"The problem with easy, immediate publishing, via the internet, is that it tricks us into thinking that writing is somehow immediate, and should be shared everyday. This is simply not true. Percolating is good."

So... this is it. The work of writing is work. It's showing up, butt in chair, like it's your job, something I all too frequently fail to do, yes. But it's also the work of not quite writing... scribbling in the dark, reading, living, loving. It happens in far off places and in the lamplight in my own room. It happens in commuting and at concerts and in the kitchen, watching how the angle light hits drifting detergent bubbles just so.

I said in that same blog post that my new mantra was "never turn down an adventure." I never dreamed that 2013 would put so many in my path. I traveled to New England in the middle of winter, climbed ocean rocks in the cold to catch a glimpse of Eliot's inspiration, learned about obedience and craft at a writer's retreat, fell in love in a Harvard bookstore, and said yes to one of my life's scariest, most beautiful adventures.

For a while, I've been living on the edge of change. I feel seismic shifts happening in my soul. Only love and trust of the highest order can handle such a thing.

And then I catch myself overwhelmed to the point of not writing. What can I possibly write in the face of such immensity?

No. How can I not write?

So I've simmered these past few months. I've felt something of my old self being refined and yet still the same, still me, still here. Perhaps I will finally be able to put words to it and come back with a little something.

In the meantime, I have been writing, though not here. When times are emotional and my thoughts are too jumbled for linear prose, I write poems. I've written lots of them, because they don't have to resolve or come to a tidy conclusion or even make sense. What other form of writing can be so alive in the moment? Because of that, my poetry Tumblr is still very much alive.

Also, it's National Poetry Month, so expect more musings on poetry to come. And I've been reading too, so much I have maybe five books in progress now. More on those later, perhaps.

That's a lot of "maybe later." Maybe blog posts don't have to resolve either. Maybe that's okay.

All that to say.... to anyone still lingering out there, welcome. Diving back in to reclaim this space. Pardon the splashing and flailing around.

Teach Us (Guest Blogging Again!)

2013-02-12T23:47:00.000-05:00

It's a little bit embarrassing to notice how long it's been since I posted here... hello world! I have been living, writing, working, reading, and changing in the past month. I don't even really know where to begin. BUT! Once again, I am guest posting over at Julie's blog Greener Trees for our awesome little reading group. Check out "Teach Us," some thoughts on Helen Gardner's The Art of T.S. Eliot, Eliot's poem Ash Wednesday, and Lent. (Appropriate, right?) Grateful for this little group and the opportunity to dig a little deeper into great poetry with them...

It started as a nudge, a notion, and I couldn’t shake it. “Give up coffee.” One small gesture of no spiritual or physical importance, but enough to shift a little something in a soul too used to believing grace in theory.

It was the first year an Evangelical-raised, still-wandering believer tasted the bitter wine of Lent.

Growing up, my understanding of the season was limited at best, ignorant at worst. The way I saw it, Lent was “a Catholic thing”: binge on Tuesday, wear ashes on Wednesday, and give something up until Easter -- diet Coke, coffee, meat, swearing -- whatever spurred you on to some sort of implied holiness. Until a friend of mine explained why he practiced this mystery, that his fasting was not about the giving up, but about the awareness of his limits and a tiny sacrifice to prepare his heart for Easter, I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to do this other than old-fashioned church guilting.

I have practiced Lent in my own small, somewhat private fashion for the past several years. I wish I could tell glowing stories of how I conquered my fleshly desires and inspired others to greatness, but truth be told, I mostly spent those 40 days a year failing and rationalizing and restarting and failing some more.

Lent begins again this week. I’m going to give something up. I’m probably going to fail too. And yet, I still want to come, ash marked, to lay my own tiny sacrifice on the altar of grace.

This is the tension. Teach me to care and not to care.

(Read the rest at Greener Trees)

The Rhythm of All Things

2013-01-09T21:46:00.000-05:00

You could say I rediscovered T.S. Eliot last year, with emphasis on "re." Fragments of his writing have haunted me since my high school literature days...

"This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
"Let us go then, you and I..."

Even when I was just exploring the edges of the world of poetry, those were the kind of phrases that I simply couldn't forget.

Last year, I read The Waste Land and Other Poems and Four Quartets and knew it was only scratching the surface, so I'm super grateful that my friend Julie at Greener Trees selected The Art of T.S. Eliot by Helen Gardner for our reading group's next book. (It's not too late to join us!) It's a smallish book. It's also dense and nerdy, and I'm exercising brain muscles that have atrophied since college literature classes. This is a very, very good thing.

This week was Chapter 1. I honestly don't remember much of it, other than I wished I'd been taking notes around the halfway point. But I did jot down this quote:

"If we can discover a poetic rhythm in the most commonplace speech, this rhythm may then be capable of refinement and elevation so that it may accommodate the greatest thoughts without losing naturalness." (p 25)

Some wonder, "Why poetry? Why not just say what you mean instead of using fancy words?" Poetry is Shakespeare and metaphors and rhyming. Or maybe it's the modern writers who seem to make a pretentious alphabet soup on paper, or yell dramatic things in the corner of a dimly lit hipster coffee shop.

But poetry begins with a love of language, not just the beautiful speeches in old movies or the carefully constructed meter of the oldest poems, but the words of the street too, the easy dance of a quiet conversation between old friends, the way we inflect when we tell stories (often slightly embellished) about both the exciting and mundane moments of life.

“The dance of poetry and the dance of life obey the same laws and disclose the same truth.” (p 9)

Really, I could linger on this idea for an entire book. Where is the poetry, the music in our everyday words and actions? After a discussion about meter and a bit of scansion, Gardner mentions how once when asked to select some favorite poems for a BBC broadcast -- "not his favourite poems, but poems that stayed in his head and came to his mind at moments when he was thinking of nothing much else" -- Eliot chose highly rhythmic "thumpers," the kind of lilting, emphatic poetry that first introduced most people to the music of words. And this is what comes to mind for most people at the mention of poetry. Rhyme and rhythm. Poetic language with a heft and weight that isn't so obvious in our daily exchanges.

Which brings me back to some of the Eliot lines I never could shake.... "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky..." Perfectly ordinary, unpretentious words, only polished and naturally musical together.

I wonder if maybe it's not that language has gotten uglier or lazier in a world of sound bytes and txt speak, but that maybe we just find it hard to really, truly listen. Eliot reminds me to do that. There is a poetry to everything if we pause to see and hear it.

***

And speaking of poetry in all things.... how about poetry and comics?! I had the pleasure of collaborating with artist and Rabbit Room friend Jonny Jimison on a comic called "Winter White." I wrote some poetry and he worked some illustrative magic. Hop on over to his website and check it out. He says in a few drawings what I'm trying to get at with this post.

Awesome of 2012: The Music

2013-01-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

Hi, New Year! Starting ahead by looking back... yes, it's time for the best of 2012 lists! I make no promises to get past the music list (I didn't last year), but at least for now, here are my top 12 albums of 2012. The first few are pretty much in order, and the rest are records I returned to multiple times and loved throughout 2012. It's by no means a definitive "OMG BEST!" list (because really, who can write that?), but it is the soundtrack to my year...

Andrew Peterson - Light for the Lost Boy: Sure, I'm inclined to like anything AP releases. Sure, this record pushes musical boundaries, is lyrically cohesive and deep, and contains lots of nerdy literary references while sounding incredibly pretty. But it also has an emotional resonance that is impossible to define in words and a spirit that haunts long after the final notes fade. Also, it made me ugly cry in my car once. This album defined 2012 in so many ways. (Highlights: Come Back Soon, Carry the Fire, You'll Find Your Way, Don't You Want to Thank Someone)

Matthew Perryman Jones - Land of the Living: Discovered on Noisetrade, and oh, is it glorious. A spacious, gritty, anthemic, earthy, spiritual desert valley of a record, the kind that gets in your soul and doesn't let go. I still can't get enough of it. (Highlights: O Theo, Waking Up the Dead, Cancion de la Noche, Land of the Living)

Audrey Assad - Heart: I was a fan of Audrey's debut, but I always felt like it was only scratching the surface of what she could do. I'm pretty sure Heart is the album she was born to make. Gently passionate piano pop with a 70's songwriter flair. Beautiful. (Highlights: Even the Winter, O My Soul, Lament, Slow)

Mumford & Sons - Babel: At first, I wasn't sure it could hold up against Sigh No More for me, but Babel very became an oft-played favorite of mine. Their songs have passion, grit, and soul, the kind that you want to play a little loud, get a little angry, and shout along with. Here's to making banjos cool again. (Highlights: Whispers in the Dark, Holland Road, Lover of the Light, Hopeless Wanderer, Not with Haste)

fun. - Some Nights: It's kind of embarrassing how much I love this record. It's weird, brash, anthemic, simultaneously hipster and Top 40, happy and melancholy with the right mix of swagger and nostalgia. Kind of reminds me of attempting to describe Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, though it's probably not that serious. Also, I will forever associate it with the time I got a flat tire on the Turnpike. It made the drive bearable. (Highlights: Some Nights, We Are Young, Carry On, All Alone)

Derek Webb - Ctrl / Sola-Mi - Nexus: No album made me think half as much as I did while puzzling out the mysteries of Ctrl, but when Derek Webb confirmed that his side project Sola-Mi was a companion piece designed to seamlessly blend into the story, my brain exploded. An inseparable duo, these two albums combined tell a disturbing sort of love story about the places humanity and technology meet. (Highlights: Blocks, Attonitos Gloria, Crowd of Silent Strangers, Trust Falling)

Andrew Osenga - Leonard the Lonely Astronaut: A sci-fi concept record about loneliness, love, and forgiveness…. recorded in a spaceship studio. This was too nerdy and awesome to not support on Kickstarter, but it turns out to be a rather heartbreaking and introspective work of art. Also, the B-sides EP has a song about space pirates. (Highlights: Ever and Always, Hold On Boy, Firstborn Son, It Was Not Good for Man to be Alone)

Paper Route - The Peace of Wild Things: Noisetrade introduced me to Paper Route's fantastic debut Absence, but the follow up release made me love them more. Gloriously hooky, smart electronic pop that sounds a bit like the 80s meets OneRepublic meets a less spacey M83. (Highlights: Two Hearts, Better Life, Glass Heart Hymn, You and I)

Gungor - A Creation Liturgy (Live): Normally, I wouldn't put a live album on one of these lists, but truth be told, this could be the best live record I've ever heard. Rather than a mere rehash of songs already released, this is a stirring experience that captures the heart of a Gungor show. (Highlights: Let There Be, Spotless/You Have Me, We Will Run/He is Here)

Of Monsters and Men - My Head is an Animal: A delightfully quirky Icelandic indie-folk band that I discovered on a friend's recommendation. I'm not really sure how to describe them other than super catchy and fun. (Highlights: King and Lionheart, Mountain Sound, Little Talks)

Anberlin - Vital: Anberlin was a huge part of my college days, and sometimes I think I've outgrown them. It's true. Then a new record comes along and I buy it on principle and suddenly I'm a college kid again. It's different, it pushes and experiments in multi-textured alternative rock, but at the core, it's another fantastically fun, fist-pumping alternative rock record. (Highlights: Little Tyrants, Other Side, Innocent, Modern Age)

Eric Peters - Birds of Relocation: I slowly started getting into Eric Peters last year, starting with Chrome, a haunting, honest, and heartbreaking folk record. Three years later, Birds is the perfect counterpoint, tempering the melancholy with true heartfelt joy. These songs are quietly subversive, getting into your heart before you know it. (Highlights: The Old Year (of Denial), Don't Hold Your Breath, Voices)

Honorable Mentions: As in, I didn't listen to these a ton for whatever reason, but I enjoyed them at some point… um, 2012 was a good year.

Matthew Mayfield - A Banquet for Ghosts, David Crowder Band - Give Us Rest, Andrew Bird - Break it Yourself, Jack White - Blunderbuss, Bebo Norman - Lights of Distant Cities, House of Heroes - Cold Hard Want, Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror, Regina Spektor - What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, Anchor & Braille - The Quiet Life, The Killers - Battle Born, Kimbra - Vows, Sucre - A Minor Bird, The Avett Brothers - The Carpenter, Dave Barnes - Stories to Tell, Sigur Ros - Valtari, Norah Jones - Little Broken Hearts

The Old & The New

2012-12-31T11:23:00.000-05:00

A pair of poems I wrote for the old and the new year. Happy 2013! Grace and Peace to you in the coming year.

11:59  

Sixty seconds of darkness. 
Hold it tight,
 feel time pulse
 like a tiny heartbeat.  

It smells of new mown grass, 
electric-singed wires, 
the smoke of fireworks,
 the air of concert halls.

  If it were the last 
sixty seconds before
 I followed the old year
 into the dark  

how would I let it go?  

***  

Midnight

  The newness of a year 
screams, explodes
 into our world
 in firework flash.  

Like some alabaster jar
 cracked open, poured over
 to wash the old away,
 perfume the new with promise.

Also, super excited to say my little poem "Suadade" was featured in Every Day Poems newsletter today! Read it here. Consider subscribing. It brings much daily joy to my inbox.

And for those who may be visiting via there, welcome! :)

Christmas Day: Give Us Christ

2012-12-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Father, give us Christ.
Star Igniter,
Crack our darkness.
Send the rain to heal our deadness.
Only you make dry bones rise,
Dim the blinding lights that hide
Our fear, until we're still enough
To feel the thaw of icy hearts.
In stable and by starlight
Overthrow our every expectation.
Our world inverts
Your kingdom comes.

***

Merry Christmas! May your day be bright and beautiful and hope light your way in 2013.

For the rest of the Advent poems.... Hope * Preparation * Joy * Love

Advent IV: Show Us Love

2012-12-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

Father, show us love.
This violent world tears
Hearts apart and
Leaves us trembling in our shame.
Like winter leaves afraid to fall
We cling and sting in bitter wind.
May you slip into our world,
Swift and slight as drifting snow,
Too fragile and helpless not to love.
In heaven’s most audacious act
Our cold suspicion
Melts in spring.

***

Photography by Tina Cornett. Part 4 of a month long series of Advent poetry

Catching up?
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Advent III: Teach Us Joy

2012-12-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Father, teach us joy.
The Christmas feeling
Lost its meaning
In flashing lights, electric dreaming.
We race and chase and check a list
Until the days are gone amiss.
May you call us in our carols
In our traffic, in our deadness
And give our harried hearts the chance
To feel the wonder once again
Like waiting children
With nothing to dread.

***

Art by Tina Cornett. Part 3 of a month-long series of Advent poetry.

Catching up?
Part 1
Part 2

Advent II: Make Us Ready

2012-12-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

Photo by Tina Cornett

Father, make us ready.
This ground is fallow
We have followed
Crooked paths to vales of shadow
The cracked and drought-laced dust of earth
Thirsts and groans beneath our feet.
May we know both thirst and longing
So when the rains come
To wash us clean
We will not run for shelter's awning
But welcome the storm
Arms wide, hearts alive.

***

Photography by Tina Cornett. This is Part 2 of a month-long series of Advent poetry.
Catch up on Part 1 here.

Advent I: Grant Us Hope

2012-12-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

Artwork by Tina Cornett

Father, grant us hope.
The veil of darkness
Thick around us
Is within us, and without us.
Our secret sins and sicknesses
So mingled in our blood.
May the smallest flicker of
Your holiness come spark and light
To keep us warm and
One day burn our
Hollow kingdoms all away.

***

Advent is a special time of year to me, a remedy for missing the real beauty of Christmas in the middle of chaos. Longing, expectation, the promise of hope and joy are all wrapped up in the celebration, and with every new year I've come to appreciate this waiting even more.

Every Sunday from now until Christmas, I'll be posting a verse from an Advent poem that was a good lesson in waiting itself. I wrote the first draft for the verse above two years ago, and multiple false starts and lots of drafts later, it's finally come to life. I'm grateful to finally share it with you and hope in some small way it will help us remember and ready our hearts together.

(Many, many thanks to my dear friends Tina Cornett for providing the lovely artwork and Chris Yokel for helping me pull this poem out of the land of writer's block and bring it to life. They're awesome people.

When the Soul Needs Rest

2012-10-27T13:02:00.001-04:00

Burnout is a tricky thing. It has a funny way of sneaking up on you, slowly wedging its way into your life and routine until the resistance cracks and all your strength splits wide open.

Okay, perhaps that's a bit dramatic. But the fact that I'm calling myself dramatic for confessing my burnout is a symptom of just how sneaky it is.

These past few months have been good. So good. I've celebrated birthdays of friends' kids and art, made stories and memories and in-jokes, spent weekends in four different hotels, become quite the proficient packer, and put a lot of live music in my ears and miles on my car. Somewhere over the summer, in the recognition of the brief, momentous preciousness of life, "do things that scare you" and "never turn down an adventure" have become new guiding principles for me.

Life is full. I am so blessed.

But of course, there's balance to find too when caught in the "embarrassment of riches," I suppose because I can only bear so much. Because lately, all I've wanted to do is find a dark corner and shut myself away and sleep. Rest.

Rest is hard for me. It's hard because I want to be doing, accomplishing, making, participating... all kinds of -ings. I know I need it to function correctly, but at the same time, I hate missing things or letting people down. And then I hear Madeleine L'Engle in my head:

"When I am constantly running, there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening." (Walking on Water)

A week or so ago, on a Friday at the end of a crazy week, I crashed in my burnout and slept for maybe 10 hours. Then Saturday was about little quiet things. Got an oil change. Ran errands. Played records. Read. Even waited under the stars for a meteor shower after midnight. No meteors could be seen with the glare of street lights and headlights blurring the horizon, but for the first time in far too long, I noticed how clear the sky could be, how bright the stars dancing between the branches and tendrils of Spanish moss.

How small you are, the voice of God seemed to say in a twinkle of sunlight off Venus' atmosphere. Sit and rest a while. There's a whole eternity ahead of you.

Lately, I've also experienced a self-diagnosed creative funk. These unproductive times are scary in a culture wired to produce, as if art is manufactured at a precise assembly line rate lest the profits fall or something. Even now, I'm looking at the archive sidebar on this blog fretting at the sheer lack of posts as 2012 draws to a close.

Then I remember the pursuit of stillness, words always swimming below the surface, waiting. I remember how foolish it is to measure myself as if I can add another inch to my height.

Rest. Wait. How small you are.
There's a whole eternity ahead of you.

{Guest Post} Shine Your Light

2012-10-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

After a month off.... it's a new Deeper guest post! This comes from my Hutchmoot friend Ashley Thomas. She's pretty rad, and I hope you enjoy her take on Andrew Peterson's new record. Deeper is a quasi-monthly series on the art that moves us. I'm still looking for guest posts... so go here if you think you'd want to do that.

I'm writing this as I'm facing a difficult time in my life. I'm in a state of transition. I've felt unstable in a time where most would look at my life and think I've got the world on a string... great job, great marriage, all around happy life. Even with all these great things, my world has felt rocky. I've not known what to do, where to turn, or what to think. This album could not have come at a better time for me.

Light for the Lost Boy might be Andrew Peterson's most engaging and versatile album to date. Andrew includes his usual acoustic guitar, folksy rhythms, always complete with hammer dulcimer (which I recently learned is an homage to the late, great Rich Mullins), but changes things up with electric(!) guitar and some serious percussion additions, courtesy of Will Franklin Chapman of Caleb and Will Sayles. Overall, listeners will find this to be a very new sound for AP, but with his signature style worked through the new.

Now that I've said all that, let me say this: please forgive me if this is less of a music review, but more of an emotional outpouring of my heart. When hearing the album for the first time, I was on the verge of quitting my job, taking a leap towards writing full time, and feeling very emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. The album wasn't a band-aid. It wasn't an instant "cure-all" either for my weary soul. In fact, this album is riddled with sorrow. It was a sign post, a reminder. The sorrow reminded me of how deeply broken I really am, how broken humanity is, and how desperately I am in need of a Savior. A line from the final track on the record, "Don't You Want to Thank Someone," sums this up well:

Can't you feel it in your bones? / Something isn't right here / Something that you've always known / But you don't know why

The pain I was feeling, the indecision, the uncertainty, all wrenched at my heart. I'd wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, feel sick in the mornings before work, and totally wiped out by the time I returned home. This is no way to live, friends. During times like these, all I could do was cry. "Shine Your Light on Me" spoke volumes to me during this time. I felt the chorus speaking over me during these times and really experienced it fully at Hutchmoot this year.

And the servants of the secret fire / Were gathered there / The embers of the ages / Like a living prayer / And all at once I saw the shadows flee / Shine your light on me, on me / Be a light unto my path / And a lamp unto my feet

As a part of Hutchmoot, I was privileged to take part in the opening show of the Light for the Lost Boy tour. Sitting there in the auditorium with friends newly made, yet somehow closer than many I've known for years, I felt the culmination of my healing. The enemy fled at the sound of the voices of these saints, Servants of the Secret Fire, if you will, lifted in praise to our Creator. Their songs brought me healing. Their songs brought me hope. Andrew Peterson's words brought me the Truth of the Word that my soul long needed and had forgotten.

At Hutchmoot, through tears I mumbled a broken "Thank you," to Andrew. I hope this is a better thank you than the one I mustered at the 'Moot.

Oh, but then forgiveness comes / A grace that I cannot resist / And I just want to thank someone / I just want to thank someone for this

Ashley Thomas is The Nerdy Blogger. She holds a B. A. in English Literature from Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee and will begin her M. A. in English at Mythgard Institute in Spring 2013. Ashley blogs, reads, writes (for fun and for hire), and spends time with her husband, Ryan, and their two cat-monsters, Luna and Oliver.

Yay October!

2012-10-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

October is pretty much my favorite month. I know, I know... Florida doesn't get real autumn and all that. But we do. It's just different.

Last year, I read a stunning essay by my friend Rebecca Reynolds that helped me understand a little more why I love this season so much. And then I wrote a poem about it, because poets steal. Finally finished revising it a couple weeks ago. I don't post poetry here very often (that's what Tumblr's for!) but I'm a little proud of this one. Also, you should go read Becca's blog The Little Boots Liturgies, because she is awesome.

The light looks different this time of year.
Shafts of gold pierce trees,
Transient, darkening.
The earth goes to bed
A little earlier each night

Because she knows she’s getting older,
Fighting gravity, remembering
Carefree green and dancing in the
Rain, remembering emotional
Thunder and flashing lightning.

But now
She’s only wiser,
And knows sleep makes all things
Rested, beautiful.

And tomorrow she’ll wake early,
Dress in fire red and bands of gold
Because she can
With no one left to impress
And never more alive.

A Feast and a Wedding

2012-09-25T16:21:00.002-04:00

Late last night, Sherri and I arrived home after a weekend in Nashville at The Rabbit Room's annual Hutchmoot conference. I can't begin to describe how much this weekend means to me without dropping clichés, but maybe they're cliché because they're true. I can try. I woke up early Monday and started writing this, trying to sort out my thoughts. Semi-coherent as they are, I hope this will at least give a glimpse into the spirit of the event.

Photo by Chris Yokel

Last morning in Nashville, third floor, Baymont Inn. Our room must face east, because every morning the sun practically forces its way through the darkening shades, able to fill the room with light if we just pull back the darkness enough to let it. I'm sitting at the desk for the first time this weekend, letting a sliver of sun be my writing light.

And my heart overflows.

As I heard many say over and over, this place is an "embarrassment of riches." How do I began to talk about this weekend without saying everything I said last year, everything everyone said before? I can't. But this year, things were somehow different.

Last year, I came with a fuzzy notion of what to expect, and barely knowing only two people. I'd had some conversations with Jason Gray here and there, and I'd at least met Andrew Peterson a few times. Otherwise, there was no real world interaction with any of the people from this blog I'd been following for several years, a terrifying idea for someone like me. I picked up my name tag and folder, chatting with Shauna long enough to figure out she was one of the Petersons, then ducked into the shelves of used books and pretended to shop for 30 minutes. It wasn't until I met Ashley and Ryan, two other first timers, we mutually appreciated her superhero shirt and my plaid Chucks, and we founded our "New Kids" table at dinner that I could feel my heart at ease.

I left Hutchmoot 2011 with a small group of new friends, even feeling a kinship with people I was still meeting after the end. But this year, it was like coming home or a family reunion. Even those I met for the first time felt like people I'd known forever, through their words and art and conversation in the Facebook group. Maybe the best part was carpooling back and forth between the hotel and the church, cultivating meaningful friendships along the way.

And I am reminded these things matter. Everything matters.

Recently, Kristin Tennant wrote about online communities before she headed off to her own weekend gathering at STORY Chicago. She wrote about the paradoxical benefits and traps of online friendships, but ultimately concluded they do matter, that they are not somehow lesser things.

It's no stretch to say I love the people of The Rabbit Room. I find their rhythm and their hope infiltrating the way I see the world. I find their kindness and depth and humor and beauty in their creations. Time and again, I've been encouraged by their words. Even if we can't be a part of each others lives physically and daily, I would never discredit the power of their friendship, because it's real, because they are real, not just names and avatars.

Still, when you can hug someone you'd only seen in pictures, hear the voice behind words on a screen that have given you hope, or feel the warmth of a living, breathing person next to you, sharing food and laughter and, yes, a few tears, some kind of longing wakes up.

If it's true God will resurrect and remake the universe and us, and we won't be unrecognizable wisps of smoke, but who we are, just more fully, and if it's true there is something more real than what we see now, that Jesus was able to walk through doors because he was more real than the door, and we are ghosts upon the earth, groaning under the curse and waiting for the day of redemption, then for me this was a taste of the hope to come. We walked through the walls of our geography and keyboards and lifted our very real voices to sing the Doxology together.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. How beautiful to think that we will one day share in this forever.

This year, more people came than before and space was tight, so the church set up a massive striped tent for an outdoor dining hall, strung with lights and nestled in the green warmth of the backyard. If I had to settle on a favorite place of the weekend, this might be it. We raised our glasses and ate and laughed. At one meal, friends at my table called it Thanksgiving.

On Saturday night, sharing our final meal in the cooling evening air, I watched twilight descend and dim and thought, "I sure hope there's a tent in heaven. And Chef Lewis' apple crisp."

"And we dream in the night of a Feast and a Wedding..."

Rich Mullins & a Legacy of Grace

2012-09-19T10:32:00.001-04:00

It's strange how you don't recognize just what an influence someone has held on your life until many years later. To look back, to see your journey and the way others have left their marks along the way is profound, and in some ways, a little sad.

Today is the 15th anniversary of Rich Mullins' death. Those who have been immersed -- or at least dipped -- in the Christian music scene have heard the name, perhaps even the songs or the stories. He's something of a legend now, bigger than life and memory. I had only discovered my local Christian station Z88.3 a week or so before, and I was a 14-year-old at the height of my "Jesus Freak" era, looking for something to give voice to my intense spiritual passion.

I was listening to the morning show when the news broke. Songwriter Rich Mullins died in a car accident on his way to a show. They followed the story with "Awesome God." I hadn't heard the song in a few years, my only real memory of it being my fifth grade class singing it for a chapel service, all proper in our dresses and ties until we had to pantomime "thunder in his footsteps and lighting in his fist." And yet, the song had left some sort of mark on me that I didn't realize.

Oh, the guy who wrote "Awesome God" died? How sad.

Shortly after, my mom picked up a copy of his sort of hits collection Songs, and I discovered a side of this writer that was far wider and deeper than "When he rolls up his sleeves he ain't just puttin' on the ritz." I wore the CD out. Sure, the songs were a mix of the stunning and the cheesy, but I loved it. It was unlike anything I'd heard, from the hammered dulcimer flourishes to the haunting drums and chant in "Calling Out Your Name." If I hadn't discovered his music then, I wonder if I would have found the taste for poetic folk songwriting that colors my listening now.

But perhaps, more than anything, I am thankful for the grace I learned, even indirectly, from his work. It led me to read The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, a book I can honestly say changed my life, even if I was too young to really know what "bedraggled, beat up, and burnt out" meant. The lyrics on his posthumous release The Jesus Record wouldn't make sense to me until after I stumbled through my own doubts and could empathize with the cry, "Well I memorized every word you said / Still I'm so scared I'm holding my breath / While you're up there just playing hard to get."

I've come to learn that Rich was not a saint. He was sort of that weird rebel of Christian music, a scruffy barefoot ragamuffin that raised eyebrows even as he wrote such moving songs. I wonder what 14 year old me would have thought of him. And yet I regret never having the chance to meet him or at least see one of his concerts, because I can tell from the stories people who knew him tell that I would have liked him now.

So much has changed in 15 years. I work for that radio station that made the introductions. I've muddled through the dark, with grace to light my way. My own prayer could very well be, "I can't see how you're leading me, unless you've led me here / Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led." These songs have helped light the path, and I am grateful.

I have a hard time pinning down a favorite song to share, but I'm always drawn back to "Calling Out Your Name." There's something about the poetry of comparing God's glory to "the fury in a pheasant's wings" that gets me every time.

This thirst will not last long.

"...the Lord takes by its corners this old world / And shakes us forward and shakes us free / To run wild with the hope / To run wild with the hope"

Miscellany Links. Remembering How to Write.

2012-09-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

Is it possible to forget how to write? Because I haven't done anything here in almost a month, and it feels weird. I had a couple posts in the queue -- decent ones actually -- but now they're a little bit dated. Ho hum.

So as August/September is prone to be, things have been crazy. Really crazy. In the week between conferences, between living out of suitcases and nurturing my two vocation-passions (radio/music and writing/creativity) I thought I'd pop back in to say hello and share a few things I've written for other places. If you haven't seen them before, please enjoy them and pretend I posted something new. :)

JFH has been keeping me rather busy... a couple of music reviews and an interview, with more on the way! Autumn is a full season for good music releases, so I direct you to these for now...

Andrew Peterson - Light for the Lost Boy: My second ever 5 star review... first that earned the score after months of deliberation. This record is a gem, and I can't recommend it enough. I left out the part about how the second half made me weep in my car. (the best part, I've been told)
An interview with Mr. Peterson, in which we talk about the new record, songwriting, Hutchmoot, and Bon Iver. Or perhaps more accurately, 40 minutes of mutual nerdiness with one of my writerly heroes. Such a privilege.
Derek Webb - Ctrl: The trippy and wonderful new record I already plugged here. I spent way too long puzzling out the significance of Sacred Harp samples and the ties with his side project Sola-Mi - Nexus. That was either research or procrastination. You decide.

Already have a few more reviews in the works, so even if the blog is scarce... at least I'm writing things like that.

Art by Lauren Dubinsky for
The Good Women Project

Also, I'm pleased and a little freaked out to mention that a month or so ago I had my first piece published at The Good Women Project. I didn't plug it here because it's one of those personal stories I'm stupidly neurotic about sharing, but after too many people got wind of it and asked me to email the link... well.... here you go. Yes, I wrote about singleness. No, it's not whiny. (I hope.)

A quote: "The proverbial 'One' is someone who will help me be holier and more human than I am on my own. Not a white knight to rescue me, but a broken, lonely wanderer to come alongside and teach my pride to die." Okay, I'm a little bit proud of that line. Mostly, I'm grateful for the good conversations this story sparked with friends and strangers alike.

So there you go. I wrote. I miss writing. These times of losing touch come and leave me a little lost, but in time it comes back around. To new folks who have dropped by from Good Women and other places around the Internet, welcome. I hope you find something meaningful here.

To my dear friends and readers that stick around through the dry spells, you rock. Thank you.

Sketches: From the Ocean

2012-08-18T22:19:00.000-04:00

I scribbled this out in my notebook while getting toasted on New Smyrna Beach, Saturday, August 11. It's mostly practicing the art of noticing details and creating a sense of place in my writing. Like it as is. Don't know what to do with it. Posting here, with minimal editing for coherence.

There are some places we feel most alive. The ocean is mine.

I don't know why even the most noisy, crowded, touristy beach can feel like home. Maybe it really is all the people that help it come awake, at least today.

Tall women bronzed by the sun to the color of caramelized sugar.

A middle-aged couple, tanned and fit, speeding their bicycles along the waves.

Children defending sandcastles in colorful swimwear like armor, one even in full Batman gear -- boots, cape, and all.

An older couple under an umbrella, hand in hand. How many sunsets have they watched together here?

Young kids with boogie boards and surfer girls riding waves back to solid earth, accepting the risk that comes with the adventure.

I smell salt, sand, and coconut lotion. The surf never ends her song.

She's a siren, this ocean, like the ones in those ancient legends. She beckons us in, further, deeper. She pushes us back, because our fragile bones can't handle the weight.

I want to stay here forever, splashing clumsy in the waves, letting her defy gravity for me. Maybe we weren't made to always walk on solid ground. Maybe we were made to float as well, and this is God's gift to remind us.

I thought there would be a storm today, but instead, only wispy strokes of gray and white on endless blue upon blue mark the sky, and the edge of foam draws the line between sand and churning surf. I am mostly glad, though I would love to see a storm at sea someday.

For now, only sun, sweat, and my best SPF 50 efforts against sunburn are here to stain my notebook and blur the ink.

My beach read? N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope. Fitting to read about renewal and recreation and hope here, in the face of one of God's most beautiful created gifts. Wild, ancient, and so unsafe, yet constantly being made new.

I wonder if it's time to return home, back to solid ground yet. The green sea beckons me to stay, but real life beckons me home.

High tide.

The water pushes closer to our camps and claims. The sea still reigns.

The Rhythmic Universe

2012-08-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

"In The Spell of the Sensuous, the writer David Abram describes two friends meeting again after a long time. If we should chance to overhear them, he says, we might well notice 'a tonal, melodic layer of communication beneath the explicit meaning of the words, a rippling rise and fall of the voices in a sort of musical duet, rather like two birds singing to each other.'

"Each voice mimics a portion of the other's melody, at the same time adding its own inflection, which is then echoed by the original speaker, 'the two singing bodies tuning and attuning to one another, rediscovering a common register, remembering each other." This tuning and retuning, this remembering, is what is called 'entrainment'

"It is hardly surprising that human beings should attune to one another in this way. After all, we live in a rhythmic universe, in which the earth revolves around the sun and the moon around the earth. Our bodies are rhythmic organisms, containing breath and pulse and heart beat. If you put two grandfather clocks in the same room, their pendulums with fall into unison within a couple of days. In the same way, when people talk or sing or move together, we tend to 'entrain,' or synchronize our pace with one another. This is one of the delights of good conversation: not just the stated theme, the surface content, but the underlying pleasure of entrainment, the half-conscious pas de deux with someone else's mind."

~ Christian McEwen, World Enough & Time

***

I've always been fascinated by rhythm and resonance, so this was a really beautiful idea to me.

Making Readers Work + Not So Subtle Plug

2012-08-13T10:00:00.000-04:00

The hardest writing class I ever took wasn't creative writing, or literary theory, or argument. It didn't involve writing instruction manuals or legal things. It wasn't even in the English department.

Nope. That hard class, the bane of my college writing existence, was Writing for Mass Media.

The journalism bit wasn't too bad. We wrote stories for the campus paper about important things, like student road construction angst or the drama department's upcoming Shakespeare production. But TV news... well, there's the thing. Take that news story I wrote for the campus paper and cut it down to two lines? Brevity, clarity, and just enough to give a sound byte for a distracted culture?

It should be easy. It's not.

I've gotten better at brevity since then, honing my skills on Twitter, learning to boil a thought down to the essence, quick and simple to digest. But, as most of my blog posts can attest, given unlimited space I can go way too long and convoluted; I even use semicolons now and then. (see?) And this is the writing I'm drawn to most. The experts say short and punchy, fast-paced, bullet points and don't you dare go past 400 words lest the masses fall asleep and/or riot.

That's why I was a bit intrigued by this article my friend Aj sent me: How Hard Should We Make Our Readers Work? He discusses the difference between literary and popular novels, and I kind of had a big "Yes!" moment reading it.

It’s interesting that “the more classical model” of reading, the one that requires “work,” has become “unfashionable.” As Ms. Smith suggests, nowadays we tend to approach books as we do movies — we want to be acted upon, rather than act. Among other things, the electronic age has heightened our expectations of a given media and lowered the requirements of participation. Rather than having to sit down and “work at a text,” we approach reading as a “spectator sport.”

So puzzling out a difficult text, engaging an author's mind scribbling notes in the margins, is old-fashioned, too hard. What do we gain, and what do we lose? I love words, and style. I want my breath stolen by a beautifully crafted sentence. I want lines that sparkle, make me gasp, send me reaching for a pen to write them down with wonder. And I want to relearn how to have long, thoughtful discussions with fellow readers. I suppose I'm not the only nerd with hopelessly unbeachy books, and I'm okay with that.

Not so subtle plug!

If you're done with reading just for entertainment and want to have a deeper experience with words, Greener Trees is at it again. We just completed a wonderful six weeks reading The Mind of the Maker together, and next week we're starting Refractions by Makoto Fujimura. I promise, it won't be quite as heady, but it will be rewarding. Plus, this is a great group of people to read along with.

Go here for an overview and please consider joining us on August 20!

Friday Music!

2012-08-10T10:00:00.000-04:00

I keep listening to this over and over and over because I'm so giddy that there is finally a new Mumford & Sons record coming out.

AND I'll be in Nashville on release day. (also giddy about that.) Which means a trip to Grimey's may be necessary before the flight home.

Also getting multiple repeats: Derek Webb's new album Ctrl. I love his wildly creative approach to music as art. This is trippy and wonderful and, of course, so very different from anything else he's done so far. You can buy it now on his website, or you can grab a 3 song sampler on Noisetrade for free. Be sure to pick up his side project Sola-Mi while you're there too. Also trippy, in a more Radiohead electronic meets haunting female voice meets sci-fi way. They just go together.

On vacation, yoga, and being made

2012-08-09T10:00:00.000-04:00

Karin said I should write about my first yoga experience. So I did. Sort of. Then I had to get philosophical and stuff at the end.

I'm on vacation this week. An open-ended vacation, as I've now decided to call it, the kind where there are no plans other than the plan to not wake up early and never, ever go to work. This could either be the worst or best kind, but since I am horrible at planning exciting adventures for myself, this is usually the best I can do with those magical days I get paid to stay home.

For me, the funny thing about a week off with no plans is the disorienting effect of reclaiming 11 lost hours a day. Those hours of commuting and lunch breaking and working are suddenly free, open, empty mugs. My natural inclination is to fill them up! Do exciting things. Travel somewhere. Or in the very least, work like mad doing things at home.

But for the sake of that ongoing pursuit of stillness I tal ked about months ago, I suppose the greatest way to use them up is to take them as they come, find ways to insert a little meaning into them, get reacquainted with my hometown, and try things that I otherwise never have time or energy to do.

Hence, I took a community yoga class.

If you know me, then you know why this is hilarious and potentially embarrassing. Unflexible, uncoordinated, ungraceful me, contorting my body in odd positions is bound to be an interesting event. But, with a borrowed mat and the realization that the older I get, the more comfortable I am with making a public fool of myself, I decided to give it a shot.

"I don't want you to look at your left or your right," the instructor warned. "Go your own pace, and don't worry if you can't do all the poses. This is for you."

Good advice, considering we were eight women, already self-conscious enough in messy hair and workout clothes, standing in a downtown Mt. Dora cobblestone courtyard and about to perform for anyone who happened to walk or drive by. What would ordinarily be a sweltering summer evening actually turned out quite nice -- low hanging clouds, full of unreleasing rain, and a gentle breeze off the lake. A good thing too, because I never dreamed stretching and breathing would be such a workout.

There's an understandable skepticism about this kind of thing among some Christians... the ties to Eastern religion, the idea of disciplining the body as a means to meditation and spiritual practice. But honestly, it's hard to feel spiritual when every fiber of muscle tissue in your arms is screaming at you on your eighth downward dog pose, or when you're trying to make a tree pose that doesn't resemble a sapling in a hurricane.

Somewhere midway through the hour, I felt myself breathing deeper. By the end, lying on my mat under the gray sky, though my thoughts were still more along the lines of "Thank God that's over," at least I was quieted enough to feel the pulse of blood through my veins and my aching muscles. It wasn't some weird New Agey spiritual bliss, but it was a glimpse of that elusive stillness, just enough to ease the craving.

The mindset of our culture is to fill every moment, always be doing, and working hard. A strong work ethic is important, but I wonder if there's also a suspicion ingrained in our souls that if we are not constantly battling, studying, watching and tense, that the prowling lion of evil might have its way in us. Madeleine L'Engle, in Walking on Water, discussed the virtue of time for simply being:

"I sit on my favourite rock, looking over the brook, to take time away from busyness, time to be. I’ve long since stopped feeling guilty about taking being time; it’s something we all need for our spiritual health, and often we don’t take enough of it.

Perhaps this is the missing thing, the time to lie still and feel the blood rush, to watch the clouds race, to know that your heart still beats and be grateful for it. Perhaps even, it is time to hear the laughter of your Maker in the breeze.

The End in the Beginning

2012-08-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one." ~ T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

Read all of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets in one sitting last night, and the ending... well... couldn't get past it. So great.

{Guest Post} Grace and Funky Beats

2012-08-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

Breaking the relative quiet around here, because it's guest post time! Deeper returns digging into some absolutely unfamiliar ground for me... hip-hop. Blake Collier has the story of how he went from hater to hip-hop head in a year and why this music and culture matters. Thanks, Blake!

What exactly did it take for a white guy from the Panhandle of Texas to become a hip/hop-head? There are a multitude of ways that my music tastes could have been infiltrated, some I have a reasonable grasp on and others that betray my understanding altogether. However, the one that I probably understand the best is my complete inability to turn down a bet, dare, challenge, or whatever you want to call it. I, personally, call it a death wish. Some turn out better than others: snorting a Pixie Stick for $5 in middle school was probably the worst one. (To this day, certain things still have a slight hint of cherry in their aroma.)

But it was leading up to 2011 when I took on the challenge that would completely reinvigorate my love for music. A friend of mine, who was a music sales rep for one of the major music sellers in the country, challenged me to listen to a year of hip hop. He sent me a list of around 70 classic hip/hop albums, mainly from 1985-2000 and I chose 52, one per week. And thus began the revolution of my music tastes.

I cannot rightly take you through the whole experience of the year, so I will try to give you a glimpse. My first album was Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs, because I had already bought it and it was handy. Slug, the emcee for Atmosphere, is a nice entry point for people who know little to nothing about hip/hop and base their negative opinions of hip/hop on other negative opinions by people who never really listened to it either (these people may or may not have been largely white). I can speak somewhat cynically here, because I was one of those people. The only album I had really listened to in the genre before 2011 was N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton, but that had always been a trendy thing for white middle class high school kids to do. I was, however, about to enter into the wide world of hard and funky beats.

No holds barred. Take no prisoners. Do or die.

I went from A Tribe Called Quest to Public Enemy to Beastie Boys to Eric B. And Rakim to RUN D.M.C., Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, Wu Tang Clan (and its individual members), Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, MF Doom, Madlib, Company Flow (and its members, mainly El-P) and to a few of my Christian brothers in DeepSpace5. I journeyed across a reasonably good cross-section of the hip/hop landscape. So as the beats traversed my ears week after week, I began to pick up on the slang, the types of samples commonly used, cultural observations of these ghetto reporters and visions of these prophets of the streets. And the strangest thing happened somewhere in that year— I began to care.

I began to care about the things these emcees were flowing about. I began to care about the specific problems that were part of the black community. And, most importantly, I began to dig into how the gospel could answer those issues that were as much a part of hip/hop as the soul/jazz/funk samples that were being mixed by those wizards of the turntable. A white guy, who lived a majority of his life in a town that had probably no more than four black families within its city limits, began to be moved across the tracks, to the streets, to the ghettos, to the places that most comfortable, American Christians would never want to go nor to understand.

I inundated myself with documentaries, books, artwork (largely graffiti) and anything else that was essential to the definition of hip/hop, all the while coming to understand elements of my faith that I don’t think I ever would have understood if it had not been for this personal displacement. Yes, there is gratuitous violence in gangsta rap music, but there is gratuitous violence in the ghettos. Yes, there is gratuitous misogyny in hip/hop music, but there is gratuitous misogyny in all parts of our country (and in all cultures). And, yet, we only point our collective finger toward this one genre of music. Classic avoidance of blame. These things should be fought against, but pointing the finger just at hip/hop is not going to fix it. We need to point that finger right back at ourselves, for we are just as much a part of the problem. Part of our effortless ability to shift blame lies in our society’s lack of knowledge about the origins of hip/hop and what it was originally meant to do. At the dawn of hip/hop, its creation was meant as a force for good, to provide an identity for a ghetto youth that felt abandoned (by migration out of the inner cities to the suburbs). Afrika Bambaataa could be said to be the father of hip/hop, because it was largely his vision. He wanted to give the black youth something to make their own and they did, at least until the record companies saw the profitability of hip/hop in the mainstream.

All of this to say that what I came to find in hip/hop was grace. Grace, because it is given not earned. It is the doctrine that renews all without allowing any single person to boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). I can hear the laments in hip/hop of a fallen world. The laments of the black community scarred and angered by their collective history in America. You want to see part of the reality of the fallen world we live in? You ain’t gonna find it listening to music within the Christian subculture. You gotta displace yourself, like Amos, the Judean who spoke the judgment from God to Israel, and be willing to place yourself near the ugliness and sin and relate to the brokenness and suffering of humanity before the beauty of Christ’s work and the bright glory of God will fill you with hope and give you the courage to speak truth and shine that light in the darkness.

My Personal Selections for Your Listening Pleasure:

Buhloone Mindstate by De La Soul – Probably my favorite hip/hop album. Soulful, jazzy, and fun. Hard to go wrong with the first four De La records.
Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest – The first three Tribe records are essential hip/hop listening, but this one is my favorite of the three.
Madvillainy by Madvillain – One of the more recent selections. Short, punctuated songs with no hooks. Brutally honest collaboration: Madlib’s production and MF Doom’s flows are tight. An absolute classic.
Things Fall Apart by The Roots – Though, by no means, the best hip/hop crew, these guys put together a smart, socially conscious and emotionally resonant album here.
Cold Vein by Cannibal Ox – Probably the least accessible selection in this list. This is a powerhouse record. The flows are bleak and forward (and not devoid of “hard language”), but the atmosphere that is produced by El Producto is truly moving. Think of that one record you always listen to when you are feeling melancholy. This is that record translated into hip/hop.

Blake Collier has been blessed as an interim college minister for a Presbyterian church in Amarillo, Texas. He has his Masters in history from Texas Tech University, which he, still to this day, finds extremely unmarketable and incapable of being terribly useful. He makes shoddy attempts at poetry, fawns after Flannery O’Connor and has seen Grosse Pointe Blank near one hundred times. But, most important of this highly incredible information, is the fact that he is a sinner saved by grace, something that can only be explained by the ravenous pursuit of God. Check out his insanity and varied loves at fromexilegrowman.tumblr.com.

An Unfinished Work (Blogging Elsewhere)

2012-07-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

“A work of creation is a work of love, and that love is the most ruthless of all the passions, sparing neither itself, nor its object, nor the obstacles that stand in its way.” ~ Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker

A month or so ago, I joined a group of friends and Julie's blog Greener Trees to work our way through Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker. This was my second time reading the book (in a year! I never do that), and I definitely got so much more out of it this time. I'm grateful for wise friends who delight in wonder, beauty, and creativity and are willing to tackle this dense, rich work together.

Anyway, Julie invited some of us to share thoughts from a week's reading, and this week it's my turn! If you feel so inclined to read it, my post "An Unfinished Work" is now up at Greener Trees.

While you're at it, check out some more wonderful thoughts from the first four weeks of our study. Like I said, I have smart friends. And they have good things to say.

To lift a line from Sayers, "The universe is not a finished work." It's a story still in the making, with a loving Author determined to see it through to the end.

PS: If you found your way here by way of the guest post or some link or tweet... welcome! :)