Quill Upon the Paper

Tongues of Fire

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:50:35 PST

Caution! Achtung! Warning! There's a sticky subject ahead. Not that we shouldn't admit that we have elephants in the room, but we do often have a difficult time doing so. Still, it must be said that we are called to redeem, to be Christ wherever we go. In recent years, it has come into vogue in our world of the Kingdom to be glad for our freedom to curse. Or, since I think that how Scripture (and indeed any authoritative text of the ancient world) defines cursing is a far cry from our so-called four letter words, I will heretofore refer to it as 'cussing.' That sounds much earthier than, "You shall walk on your belly, and dust shall be your food."¹ Truth be told, one word obviously is derivative of the other, but we shall let slang refer to slang, and the high speech of the Lord and his servants of old will not come into this discussion.

I've chosen to write about this, in part, because it has both perplexed and irritated me for some time now. But truly, no matter my thoughts on the subject, the Scriptures, a few mature authorities, and sheer common sense have a good deal to say to us all. To begin with, the issue is that cussing is not the language of redemption. Let's allow some air into that before we continue. Am I saying that the oft-mentioned situation of hitting your thumb with a hammer is not a prelude to any vulgarity that may cross your mind? Of course not. Most of us are going to cuss sooner or later, and I don't think we should dwell very much on the specifics of things you don't want to hear from a 5-year-old's mouth.

Men will have to give an account of every idle word spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.²

What concerns me most is the revelry in freedom from a law which has been fulfilled. The Sheep have been loosed from their green-swathed pen to follow the Shepherd through the Dark Countries if they will. But on the way, we enjoy rolling in the mud and filth now and again, just to prove to our fellows that our Sovereign won't give vent to his anger over such trivialities. In the back of all our minds is the possibility that he might rebuke us, but we don't dwell on it. But that same Sovereign has made it our task to let our light shine before men, that they may see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven.³ Let us make way for the possibility that, in some small part, the use of uncouth language in any form may bring about that redemption of the language simply according to the purpose of its use and the person who uses it. If Jonathan Edwards rolled out of the pages of history and said, "I hope [insert frustration here] burns in Hell," I think I'd pay attention. But if Chris Rock says it, it gets filed away in our memory banks under "Mildly Humorous" and we long to laugh about it at the office coffee pot. It's true, we don't like high speech. We prefer Hemingway's pointedness to Fenimore Cooper's florid descriptions.

But when musicians kick off the sales of records with the idea that it's controversial to say "shit" and artists paint nude studies with emphasis on genitals, then we've crossed the line from redeeming words and pictures to selling shock. And honestly, unfortunately, it's no longer shocking. Except, of course, to the legalism crowd who has thrown out the baby of untamed great art with the bathwater of borderless voyeurism - and yes, they're found mostly in churches and older generations. The younger and perhaps more urban Christian that finds it hip to cuss has missed the purpose of speech entirely. Even Pagans (that is, those who are not Christians) have discovered this. Consider a letter to the editor from my hometown weekly.

Every time I am reading your publication and come across a term like “really sucked” or “kicked ass” or “it takes balls,” it is like being in an art exhibition and coming across a canvas where someone has merely blown their nose. These sentiments never change and I just long for more eloquent times; Virginia Woolf and Henry James would have gotten any point across without having to subject readers to unnecessary vulgarity.⁴

Blown their nose? Yes, I believe that about sums it up. And our personal speech in this Soundbyte Era is little more than a collection of mindless and profane exclamations. Amongst believers, we must be reminded not to "use our freedom as a cover-up for evil."⁵ But "let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how to answer everyone."⁶ Should we expect Believers and Pagans alike to express anger in their language at times? Most certainly. But amongst those called to redeem culture and "take every thought captive," we should also expect speech to be a little more efficient in its usage, and more beautiful in its scope.⁷

And if you made it this far, enjoy one of my favorite slam poetry performances by Taylor Mali.

1. Genesis 3:14.
2. Matthew 12: 36-37.
3. Matthew 5:16.
4. Cynthia Markert. Metropulse. Letters to the Editor. September 23, 2009.
5. I Peter 2:16.
6. Colossians 4:6.
7. II Corinthians 10:5.

Friday at the Square Room

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:26:31 PDT

This just in: Because of new FTC guidelines, I must disclose that I received my copy of North! Or Be Eaten for free from Waterbrook/Multnomah Publishing, in exchange for writing a review. I probably should have mentioned this anyway, but it did not occur to me. All legalities aside though, I still could not help but thoroughly devour such a delicious tale. And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Live at the Square Room
Friday, October 16th, 8pm

Andy & the Andys

If you're doing nothing this Friday night, you should leave your nothingness and go with all haste to the somethingness of this concert. If, perchance, you are doing something, then you should stop immediately upon the hour of 7 tomorrow evening and go to the concert. Not only are three of the best songwriters I know gathered under one roof as a band, but my friend Andy Vandergriff is opening for them. I would geek out and pee on myself while spouting the unintelligible gibberish of the socially inept. But I'm not opening for them, Andy is. And yes, we've all thought of every possible joke about Andy and Andy and the Andys, so we won't mention them. I'll see you at the show.

The Carpenter's Furniture

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:45:57 PDT

Here is a story I wrote after sweating and cursing through the refinishing of two antique pieces of furniture for my daughter's room. I love heirlooms and storied family treasures. The idea is to keep a copy of this story with the furniture for future reading. Enjoy.

The Carpenter’s Furniture: a Redemption Story

They began life as a handful of seeds. Or perhaps what merely amounted to a handful, for they had never been gathered together or held in anyone’s hands. Long they lay in the ground, waiting while winter visited its breath upon their elders above the surface. But then, something inside said that it was time, and they began to change. It was hardly noticeable, really. No one paid much attention when any of the thin green saplings poked their brave noses above the dirt. That was as they wanted it.

But soon their skin hardened into bark and they added years to their lives, piling on the seasons of flood and drought, until one day, a man came and called them by a name. It was not the name they had known when they were born, the name that ran through their sap and roots and stretched out to the smallest twigs of their branches, the name that the sky spoke when it looked down upon them. It was a foreign name: “May-puhl.”

“May-puhl?” they thought, and they questioned one another along the breeze that ran through their grove. The man was young, it seemed. Men did not live as long as trees, but this one seemed to think himself old enough for judgment. Then he took out a long, serrated knife, and cut them all down. It hurt terribly, and they didn’t understand, but they bore their fate with the patience given their kind. Other men came and carved up their bodies and carried them away, where they were divided up and rendered unto planks and facings.

Time passed, and the planks were bought and sold and nailed and glued together. A carpenter from Alabama happened upon a collection of them and paid out quite a sum, taking them back to his shop excitedly. For many days he stared at the wood and drew up plans, hoping that his work would feed his family. Then, on a Saturday in April, he began to work, beveling edges and routing grooves, ripping boards and gluing joints. His wife would occasionally look in on him. He moved from the larger bits to doing some scrollwork on the apron of two pieces. They seemed to his wife to be turning into a bureau and a vanity. The scrollwork was new to him, but he threw his heart into it, and in the end it turned out well. The bureau and the vanity were sanded and stained and went up for sale in his tiny storefront.

There they sat for a time, and the carpenter began to think less of himself and wondered about the value of his skill. But upon an unexpectedly warm day that September, a lady came in the door. The timing seemed queer, Uncanny as the carpenter’s wife later put it. For the lady searched round the storefront and decided on exactly those two pieces which had languished for months. She offered a sum for them which was strangely a few dollars more than what the carpenter needed to make rent. The carpenter took it with a meek and thankful look in his eyes, and he loaded the pieces into a truck to deliver them to her house, which turned out to be a small affair tucked away on a large farmstead near a bend in the river. Cotton bolls were beginning to open in rows stretching away to a line of elms that towered in the distance toward the south. The field to the north, away from the river, held a vast crop of late bush beans that hung like green jewels in the sun. The dirt road ran straight on a slight causeway between fields. The carpenter drove up to the house, which had apple trees surrounding it and a large kitchen garden. He unloaded the bureau and the vanity and carried them into the sitting room, hoping to meet the farmer himself, but the man was nowhere to be seen. The lady thanked him and offered a basket of vegetables to him as he left.

She, though her frame was delicate, worked happily to move the two pieces into respective rooms, cherishing the idea of her husband’s return. And return he did. Late in the evening, he came down the road in the seat of a red tractor, his weary shoulders slightly hunched at the wheel and an exuberant border collie dashing about the path around him. His wife met him at the front door. Dinner was ready, but she wanted to show him a surprise first. She led him into the back bedrooms of their tiny house, and he stopped in the doorway when he saw the new furniture. His mind quickly rifled through the accounts, drawing up beads of sweat on his forehead when hard times came fresh on his memory, but then he saw the joy in his wife’s face. He let it be in good faith, and he smiled and thanked her for the gifts.

It was several years later, when the farmer’s wife took sick. She lay in the bed trying bravely to manage a smile on her wan face, as the farmer did his best to work his land and care for his wife. He wished that she had borne children who might help with the work, but they had none. At last, the malady conquered her, and she died. He buried her and mourned deeply, but did his best to continue the work with his dog for company.

As time passed, he fell in love with another woman, much younger. They married at length, but she, being immature in ways, was jealous of her husband’s first wife. She despised the bureau and the vanity, knowing them to be cherished gifts. Late one afternoon, out of youthful spite, she hewed the legs off of the vanity, and painted both pieces a creamy white. To be truthful, it was a rather dashing hue, although the vanity was now little more than a child’s desk. The farmer himself said nothing, hoping not to upset her.

Years crept up and flooded away again, and they, despite this offense, were faithful to each other and bore two children: a daughter and a son. The young girl inherited the carpenter’s furniture as a bedroom set. Initially she did not know the tainted history of it, but as she grew they saw fit to tell her. Soon, she married a quiet man, a jack-of-all-trades as it were. He was a musician but was studied in many arts and had industrious hands. They also bore two children: a son and a daughter. The little girl inherited the carpenter’s furniture in her turn, and cherished them as heirlooms.

Upon leaving home to attend school as a young woman, she met a strange young man who liked music. Different though they were in their persuasions, they fell in love and were wedded. They bought a house in the city, and she brought the furniture up from her mother’s house to be their own. In the course of time, she came to be with child, and they decided upon a use for the carpenter’s furniture. Their child would also inherit it, but they desired that its history should come upon a different chapter. The young musician liked wooden and storied things that were well built, and bent his mind toward stripping the furniture of its creamy coat, which had now crackled pleasantly over the first finish. Many commented on the quality of the cracking, saying that it had class and was beautiful. But the musician and his wife reasoned that, as the paint was applied in spite, it should be undone in love.

Many hours of longsuffering work they spent, painstakingly removing the layers of yellowed paint and even the stain beneath. The musician’s friends came by to help. A black man from New York worked side by side with him, and alongside their work, they freely discussed the angst between the races of black and white men in the South. They worked as brothers, and were glad to have a freedom from the constraints of fear, at least between themselves. The musician found a man begging on the side of the road, and gave him the chance to live with dignity again by working for his food. They ate and worked with each other for a day, and the musician prayed over him and sent him off.

Most of all, the musician’s wife worked beside him, even though she was greatly with child and could not easily move about. After they had stripped away the years of paint and stain, they put new legs on the vanity and sanded the carpenter’s furniture again. Once, the vanity was left out on the porch, and the wet air bowed the paneling on one side. The musician was angry with himself, but sought knowledge about kerfing. He kerfed the panel himself and patched it, sanding it again when it was dry. The musician and his wife also began to stain the furniture a deep and dark tone, nearly black. Patiently they worked as the furniture took up all the space where they once dined as a family. Persistently, they stained and sanded and stained until it was done. It was polished and handed down as a set to their first child, a daughter. That is how it came to be here.

Book Review: North! Or Be Eaten

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:01:47 PDT

According to George Lucas, the second section of a story is where you must place your characters in the worst situation possible. This only works if the audience identifies with the characters, if they care about them, and I’ve found that I can’t help but care about the three Wingfeather/Igiby children. They have now proven themselves to be the seedlings of the royalty that runs in their lineage, and in Andrew Peterson’s second installment of the Wingfeather Saga, North! Or Be Eaten, their royalty is pitted against a vast and sinister array of villains. Even more difficult are their battles with the devils on their shoulders as they flee the soulless Fangs of Dang, the Stranders of the East Bend, and the pitiable beggars who lost children to the Fork Factory. Uncle Artham, the elder throne warden, does his best to remain lucid as he slips toward madness. Tink broods uncertainly and reluctantly over his future kingship and the responsibility thereof. Janner struggles to live up to the task of protecting his often frustrating and argumentative family.

Meanwhile, we are allowed in on the spotty and questionable history of the Igiby clan as we know it. Why is Podo Helmer so afraid of the sea? What brings him to scoff at the dragons that everyone else finds so majestic? We find out more about the power behind Leeli’s songs and the abominable origin of the Fangs. As I turned through chapter upon chapter, I found myself more and more on the verge of tears as the family was ripped apart and sent through one crucible after another. Janner goes to the Fork Factory. Tink faces the bitter end of all those drawn away by the Black Carriage. Podo finally greets his grim history. And Nia and Leeli are forced to watch patiently as these men, young and old, scramble to stand on two feet as they are repeatedly tried. Through all of the family’s seeming failures they somehow draw nearer to a victory, the face of which they never could have recognized before.

The environs of North! are bedazzling in themselves. Andy takes us from the green boughs of Glipwood Forest to the dizzying heights of Fingap Falls and Miller’s Bridge, to the grimy and oppressed streets of Dugtown, where hundreds of secret hallways tunnel beneath the city. Beyond that there are the crystalline chambers of Kimera, the cold and stony passageways of the Phoob Islands, and finally, the Dark Sea of Darkness itself. But if all these places weren’t enough, Andrew has crafted a world beyond them, complete with history and rife with tales and characters that cry out to be unearthed. We discover the ancient and tragic lives of the dragons themselves and the reasons for their deep and painful sorrow. Early secrets of Aerwiar are revealed, and we are told of the greedy sabotage of Ouster Will and the fall of the world.

After On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Andrew Peterson again attests to his craft as a consummate storyteller, bringing his love of narrative (which has long been a part of his songwriting) once more to the written page. I am so glad that this is the sort of story he has chosen to tell. The more I dig into the annals of Anniera, the more depth I discover. There are older languages which have yet to be fully expounded upon, maps which invite me to consider the boundless adventures beyond my own horizons, and the predominant temptation of genealogy that calls me to consider well the rock from which I am hewn. I hope fans of Tolkien, Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Wendell Berry, and the like discover this book and its predecessor. A great shortage exists of authors who are willing to undertake the monumental task of spinning a world and all its history and trappings out of literary thread. It’s good to know that there is another of these daring souls at large.

-Andy Peterson's website
-The Rabbit Room
-The Wingfeather Saga Online
-Waterbrook Press

A Long Draught of Truth

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:08:24 PDT

It's the greatest feeling when you're playing at an outdoor venue and innocent passersby stop in their tracks and cock their ears to catch what's happening. If one were to be slaughtering chickens in person to the music of Liszt played backwards, I think the stopping in the tracks would also occur, but for different reasons. All told, we had a great time playing at Market Square, begging like Elijah that there would be no rain for the next hour.

Here's a bit I wrote before my last trip to Scotland. Many thanks to Ted for graciously asking me to write it, even though I didn't seem a very good sport at the time. I beg your indulgence, as it's rather long as blog posts go, but I feel that it unearths many things that might help you understand whence I come where my faith is concerned. Come, let us open the bottle. 'Twas a good year.

I usually wake up every day feeling like I’m walking with all certainty toward the gates of Hell. This does not bode well for a life of faith, some would say. Others, deeply concerned for me and my pathological need to be validated, would tell me to abandon Christianity and find something that affirms me more effectively. The problem with that is that I can’t cling to Christianity. I can try, but all things around which I can wrap my mind will eventually crumble. I’ve been asked to write my testimony, my story, as a Christian. That is, what Christ has done for me. I consider myself a writer, sort of. I’ve written pieces which have been published, if only in a small collegiate anthology. I’ve written songs that people have identified with and recorded an album which has sold a few copies, but my mind balks at the task of narrating what Christ has done for me.

This is not, let us be assured, because he has done nothing for me. He has rescued me, does rescue me, and continues to rescue me from myself, from “this body of death.” (Ro. 7:24) He has changed me from a lustful, fearful, narcissistic, prideful wretch into a wretch who is still all those things, but doesn’t desire them as much anymore. The change, you might say, is negligible. But you would be wrong. I don’t really know if I’m as lustful or fearful as I used to be, but my desiring to be other than that is cataclysmic. There are other things as well that I don’t know, such as if I’m going to heaven or hell. I have many characteristic idiosyncrasies, but certainty is not among them. The irony is that, the more time I spend in the company of Christ, the less certain I am. I heard a program on the radio today that trumpeted assurance as one of only a few qualities that defines Christians against the milieu of worldly doubt. I assume that the man who preached this is a studied apprentice of Scripture and has had more education than I care to imagine, but somehow, I disagree with him. If doubt were not so human, faith would not beguile us so. I do know followers of Christ by sight sometimes. It’s a light in the eyes, a lift of the tone of voice, a choice of words, a holy silence that often gives them away. These things are only the outworking of love. Still, I couldn’t tell you who is “getting in,” myself included. My friend Doug and I laughed together about our inability to go around looking up people’s Calvinist skirts. In the midst of all my religious insecurities though, in the empty shrine of certainty, there resides a brilliant seed of hope.

Of that, I only know that God, in Christ, desires me. My company. And he desires that I should desire him. And how I am desirous of him, and how I long to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share in your master’s happiness.” In this I hope. And how I fear the quick and tasteless dismissal, “Away from me, I never knew you.” Like all loving fathers, his wrath is far better than his absence.

But, I don’t remember ever getting saved. That’s a term that church-goers use to describe those who will be in the presence of Christ at either death or ascension, whichever comes first. All others, according to the Scriptures, will experience death a second time, which doesn’t sound so bad at first, except that the second time around, death is possessed of a little more longevity. Jesus, in order to describe it, quoted Isaiah, saying that:

“… ‘their worm does not die,
And the fire is not quenched.’”
-(Mark 9:48)

In the same breath, he called the second death by a name: Hell. The New Testament records it as Geenna or Gehenna (Γέεννα), which is a transliteration of what Jesus was actually referencing: the Valley of Ben Hinnom. It’s remembered as the place where Canaanites sacrificed their children by burning them alive to appease the god Molech.

That’s the sort of thing we need saving from. But I grew up in a church-soaked society where getting “saved” was about praying what folks commonly call “The Sinner’s Prayer.” It usually goes something like this:

Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. I am helpless to do anything right on my own. I need you. Please forgive me of my sins. Please come into my heart and life and be my Lord and Savior.

It honestly sounds a little bit silly when you say it like that. We in the church derive this odd practice from Paul’s epistle to the Romans. He says that “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) Imagine that you had a friend you had known for a couple of years. This person has taken it upon himself or herself to befriend you and listen to you and stand by you and serve you in your needs. All of a sudden, you wake up one day and decide that it’s a good time for it, so you call your friend up and ask, “Will you be my friend, from this day forth?” I would honestly be a bit hurt by that phone call. Haven’t we been friends all this time? We could say that “The Sinner’s Prayer” is a bit like a marriage vow, for our relationship with God in Christ is compared to marriage often enough in the Scriptures. But even then we must admit that the marriage vow itself is not love, which is learned over a lifetime of practice both before and after the wedding ceremony. And not all marriage vows are “[believed] with [the] heart.” But the vow is important.

Now, I’m not writing this to denounce “The Sinner’s Prayer” (which will ultimately be either denounced, or affirmed, or both by the Scriptures) or to say that my understanding of Romans is above and beyond yours. The point is that I’ve been saved countless times. That doesn’t mean I’ve prayed a certain way or that I’m holier than the next man. I couldn’t tell you, though, the day that Jesus breathed his Holy Spirit upon me and I became a new creation in Christ. Did it happen on one of the two or three times I walked the aisle at church to become a Christian and be baptized – my “public profession(s) of faith”? Maybe, but I doubt it. It is more likely that I was pursued by God long before those days and that I did not begin to fall in love with him until much, much later. I was, and am, the hard-to-get bride.

I suppose that a few people were blessed by my baptisms and altar-call responses. If so, that is the redemption of Christ, not the holiness of those symbolic actions. After those days, I was a little hellion. I spent a great deal of time getting into relationships that ended in terribly broken hearts and inflicting wounds on other people as well as myself. I was egotistical. I didn’t think much of the church, and I was cynical and bitter. I was interested mostly in myself.

I can’t say that God has set me free like he’s set some people free from alcohol addictions or drug addictions. This story isn’t very dramatic. It’s not movie material. Thank God, because I don’t think I’m strong enough not to become unhealthily interested in its darker chapters. What I do know is that, today, whatever day you are reading or hearing this, there have been small graces and unnoticeable instances in which God has set me free from the slow, chilly bonds of iniquity that I bring upon myself. There have been small raindrops in this desert that I am. Tiny blossoms blink from the fringes of my landscape like the faces of faeries glimmering through the grey foggy curtain of this rusty, wishful, and staggering world. I don’t know if I’m going to heaven or hell. Most days, my desire for good theology coupled with my incredible self-possession sits like a February stratus cloud upon the understanding of my soul. In the end, though, I do know a few things.

He loves me. Jesus, the Father, the Holy Ghost, loves me. They love me. Three-in-one, the Godhead, the mystery of the Trinity, loves me. And it’s too much of a blessing for my intellect to bear. My mind can’t take it in, and my heart longs for it so. Second thing, when I was saved doesn’t matter. No one’s going to buy me a bland white sheet cake with my name in salvation bracelet colored icing for my “Salvation Day.” Salvation is hardly about us. The fact that God loves us more than we can guess or measure is only secondary in matters of salvation. The primary issue is that he is able and he is Love. And though my salvation is secure in Christ, who sees this grand prism of time as merely a picture painted, it is also a daily wrestling – a daily “work[ing] out… with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12-13) As my friend Kenny said it, “I was saved; I am being saved; I will be saved.” I must meet the angel daily at the ford of Jabbok, strive against him, and receive the crippling and humbling blow that becomes a blessing. (Genesis 32:22-31)

Every prayer is a sinner’s prayer. God still uses me, addicted in my own right to the feeding and numbing of myself in many ways, in his unfathomably rich and loving plan. He has used me to write music that has brought people hope and, somehow, freedom. I have connected with strangers through music. I have prayed with people and there have been cracks mended in broken spirits in some small measure (and also cracks made in my own hubris). All of this is by the working of the Holy Ghost. It is the keeping of “treasure in earthen vessels, so that we know that this all-surpassing power is from God, and not from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7) I am still egotistical. I still want to serve only myself. All appearances to the contrary are usually self-serving in that they increase people’s view of me as a righteous person. But somehow, the work of the Spirit is deeper.

There are geothermal vents on the ocean floor, radiating heat into the frigid darkness of the deepest ocean trenches. Life explodes around them, existing in the warm afterglow of the earth’s molten flesh. That is the work of God in my life. Against all the odds, warmth and light exist in the deepest blackness. Life flourishes. Blessing is given and received. And so, I must arise and pray for grace to escape the cocoon of self that forms around my soul like a second skin in the night. And there is boundless grace. I must say with Paul, “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25)

A Wireless Hippie

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:14:13 PDT

We stood under the weighty red light of the WDVX "ON AIR" sign, me with my accordion, Ethan armed with a six-string, Katie wielding a fiddle that had curves in all the right places. Behold the garden of trussed-up gyspy tune-flowers. We finally got to press some of these new songs up through the dirt and see them turn green for the first time. I remember watching an old woman in the crowd who kept bobbing her head knowingly as every lyric washed into the microphone with the whispers of l'Eau de Vivre. I had a wild idea that washed up in my mind off a sea of wild ideas, so I asked Red, the DJ, if it would be okay if I simply gave away CDs to everyone there. After they let me, I have to tell you, it's an addiction that grabs your heart with its left hand. I'm so excited to play another show just so I can try and give away some more. That said, the resident hippie has sledged yet another wall of archaic anti-technologism.

As you may have guessed by the elephantine 'widget' on the sidebar, I have joined up with something called NoiseTrade. This is a company started by Derek Webb and Brannon McAllister, among others, for the purpose of creating a new format for sharing songs in this day and age of just-add-water instant life. Despite what you (or I) may think, people do prefer to tote iPods around and isolate themselves in a world of personal soundtrack, as opposed to sitting and listening with all intent to a record through actual speakers. We prefer constant noise as opposed to appreciating music because it is a different sort of reflection of the world's noise than the world itself makes. So, in the interest of letting you hear the art that has been made (hopefully a good bit of that art encourages us, ironically, to unplug), Derek &co. implemented a system in which the buyer pays the artist whatever price the buyer decides. Or, you can email five people about the whole thing and download for free. You can listen to it in your iPod, and then hopefully, you'll come out to hear the artists when they play shows - the connection is much stronger there, I assure you. So we have now eliminated the middle man. No one likes being in the middle anyway.

Thank you guys so much for listening in as we got to be part of a legendary show (locally, at least, the Blue Plate is indeed a legend). When you get to stand on the same stage that has seen David Wilcox, Bela Fleck, Del McCoury, and Mary Gauthier, just to name a few, you oughta get a little nervous. That's what I tell myself anyway. Now, go get on NoiseTrade. There's good music to be heard.

Listen In

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

I've been added as a last-minute audition to the roster of folks playing at the Blue Plate Special next week. If you don't know about this program, it's a live radio music show on WDVX in downtown Knoxville, daughter of the old Midday Merry-Go-Round and spunky thrice removed cousin to the Grand Ole Opry. Last time I played I expected a small crowd because of the rain, but a decent and involved crowd showed up anyways. It's always a great way to spend lunch. Come out and join in. Or, if you can't make it - as it is lunchtime on a business day - you can crank up your radio to 102.9 or 89.9 FM in Knoxville or hear it streamed live at WDVX.com.

Adam Whipple and Zachary Scott Johnson
WDVX Studios (@ Knoxville Tourism & Sports on Gay St.)
August 11th, 2009
12pm
Absolutely FREE!

Breaking Yellow Bricks

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:29:53 PDT

Days upon days of rain have come upon us, blessing some and cursing others. There's a house in my neighborhood with the roof bashed in from the weight of a falling oak. Half a century of tree branches were one day beautiful and the next were a profanity upon the lips of the house's now weary former occupants. But vegetables are bubbling up from their vines and bushes like gems in an earthen diadem. And as the summer ends and children go through the chrysalid whirly-jig of becoming students, I start to get that itch to try and get shows at colleges. Smoking pipe dreams, I look at the movies in my mind of how well the students will listen and connect with the music. I get all woozy when I think of driving home to tell Kat, "I sold [insert outlandish number] CD's!" It all seems so feasible and magical until I open that email account or find that phone number, the one at which I will leave a message like a fishhook in a murky sea.

I don't like to advertise myself.

Advertising myself gathers like too much espresso in my blood and I get ahead of the one I am to walk beside. Daydreaming and money get in my head and bully into leaving that powerful but lovingly yielding peace in the sufficiency of the Lamb. I forget to listen to the task given me. I forget to create because I am created. I forget that "the worker is worth his wages," but the wages are not near worth a worker. The stories disappear, and the truth becomes a clanging cymbal.

So I am always somewhat loathe to talk to people when I play at a church. I have learned to be have grace to say "Thank you," and move on, glad that the thankful ones were blessed. But, right now, indeed for the last several months, Katrina and I have been between churches. It is certainly a journey, complete with its blessings and cursings found in both the hardship and the ease. But when you play at a church, and then are asked - as undoubtedly you will be - where you attend church, the answer I must truthfully give to this question elicits an enthusiastic suggestion that I should join whatever church it is I am helping out that week.

Please, please understand, I love to help out churches with music. The opportunities are grand, and I am learning to have the grace to be served with Thank You's and That Was Wonderful's. If these things were not given to me so graciously, I would probably topple into the ever-present trapdoor of prideful self-loathing. But I cannot follow the Thank You's like a yellow brick road to assurance of where God would have my family and I attend church. I don't know where we are supposed to be right now, but there have been blessings amongst the uncertainty. If anything, the recent wandering has given us a beautiful view of who she, the Church, is. Our horizons are certainly not broad, but they are not as constricted as they would be if we had been seated in the same pews every week. No, this is not a good reason to leave your current fellowship to experience the world like a younger brother with half an inheritance. But it is collateral blessing, and I am grateful. And I feel like we are nearer to obedience than when we began. Autumn is indeed coming. The moon feels fuller, pregnant with waiting for the harvesttime. The squash plants have succumbed to the soil, and they will hopefully be hoed back in and replaced with broccoli or cabbages - or, if I get adventurous, parsnips and pumpkins.

And the beautiful knelling of October has always been the time both for coming home and for walking until your feet take you to places you knew not where.

Beside the Kawiwi River

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:43:46 PDT

I awoke at about 5:20am local time and looked around the room at the young men breathing quietly in their bunks. Despite the fan and well-running air conditioner, the atmosphere in the room was sticky with the smell of Pacific salt. I slipped on my running shoes and walked out the door. The sun was still behind the crest of Nani Ka'ala, and the mist that ever enshrouded the mountain glowed like a pillar of fire and cloud. It was still a bit cooler outside than I had imagined it would be.

I started down rumpled sidewalk of Ala Hema Street and out onto Farrington Highway, running northwest past the homeless shelter with its barracks-like construction and razor wire topping its chain link fence. A man and a woman sat on the curb inside the compound and smoked cigarettes. The man waved at me offhandedly and I managed a short breathless vowel of hello as I jogged. Beyond that, the shoulder opened onto a wide green field - sprinkler fed on the leeward side of the island - that bordered the intermediate school in the distance. I decided to make the end of the field my turnaround, and I laughed a little sadly at the gang tags that labeled the reflector on each telephone pole with the name "Saint." Aloha kakahiaka. Aloha Iesu ia'oe, even in the face of darkness.

If you listen to the dry savannah grasses in the Diamond Head caldera, you can here it in their whisper. God still lives here, amongst the hopeless. The fields are ripe, and the workers are few. In the beautiful faces of children who were so happy just to play with pipe cleaners and stickers and hear Bible stories, in the awkward but grateful smiles of their older cousins and aunts and uncles, their neighbors, their 'ohana, who were glad to stand around and talk with us, you could sense the hunger and the humility, the readiness.

I spent the week working on the third floor of Pu'u Kahea, a hundred-year-old sugar plantation house in Waianae, Oahu. The foolhardiness of those in charge to give me the task of redemptive carpentry was astounding, but I couldn't have been happier than to put my hands on the old cedar walls and to breath the astringent smell of that wood as we cut it and reformed the room. It smelled a little like lime Gatorade. We fought with the angular ceiling and the endless termite damage as others in the group took on various projects around the grounds of the camp. But the greatest reward was probably seeing the smile of a couple little girls as they collected our addresses on the last night and excitedly told people that they had learned how to talk to God.

Scotland: Lunar Epilogue

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:50:49 PDT

My second excursion into Fife was on Sarah’s bicycle, and was also late into the evening. By my reckoning, I had run further than I had ever run at one stint. Therefore, I should be able to cycle much further than I could run. I took the same route, enjoying the ease of my travel across the bridge and glad not to pass anyone on the narrow pedestrian causeway. Water stretched out in a black expanse to my right, whispering tales of Perth and its history, and to my left, where the North Sea looked back at me with its thousand-mile stare. The tiny lights on the shores of Fife stood like cheery guards above every door.

I bore left onto the paved bike trail that paralleled Newport Road, hoping that the tiny LED light affixed to the handlebars would be brilliant enough for me to make my way without vaulting over a curb. I passed the small tourist rest stop and the last of the streetlights and continued on until I was forced to slow down to be able to make out the edges of the trail as it followed the road. The grade seemed to slope gently downhill toward the water, which lapped peacefully several hundred yards to my left. After navigating some gates and detours, strategically placed to guide cyclists through construction, I began to consider the fact that I was not tired. I would eventually have to turn back, because I would ride all the way past Tayport and out onto the immense sandy promontory that lay at the edge of the forest on the shores of the sea. Either that, or I would ride all the way to St. Andrews. Neither prospect bore the hallmarks of responsibility, but I couldn’t help but think about the beauty of sitting alone on the forgotten beach until dawn and watching the seals come up onto the land and peer at me warily. As I stopped to consider whether or not to turn around, I chanced to look back toward Dundee. Above the Law and slightly to the left, hanging like a crescent emblem of war and peace above Lochee, the moon was draped in a deep ruby blush. I stood there on the lonely road, and she slowly sank behind the northern horizon, drawing to her the ocean and the years and the minds of all men quiet enough to look. Her uttermost tip went down just above Bruce’s house, and I wished that he was there to see it. I decided that I would turn back, but not before I had gone as far as this tiny road would take me.

The bike path left the side of Newport Road and plowed on down the coastline, beneath trees that further shaded the already dark track and made every sound stand out in my ears. I passed homes that glimmered through the trees and a lighthouse that stood oddly dark on the beach. The trail lead up back into the streetlights of Commonty Road and seemed to terminate near a small graveled parking lot, next to a grassy landing where a park bench sat empty. A sign said, “Danger: Steep Cliffs.” I got off the bike and walked to the rail surrounding the tiny park. Gorse bushes grew persistently on the cliff face and shielded the shore below from view. So many of the kids we had dealt with that week came out of apathetic or malevolent situations. Many boys of ten and eleven already had a keen sense of streetwise bravado that made them feel safe as they balanced on the edges of aloneness and fear. The girls were greeted by pop culture that told them that their identity was merely sexual. The wisdom of the day spoke in languages of haute couture and catchy guitar riffs. Entertainment is a jealous queen. Across the estuary, an oil rig was being built, its scaffolding highlighted from beneath by a halogen glow. The one thing we all seem to agree on, the preservation of our planet, is a litany of concern over that which will burn in the end. What of that which remains? I wondered about Knoxville.

Through a Tiny Window

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:32:47 PDT

There's still so much wonder about sending film off to get it developed. You give a tiny roll of possibility to someone you don't know, hoping that things turn out alright. Then comes the delicious and terrible waiting, your anticipation building until you can't stand still. Then you finally get that little package back and rip it open like your golden ticket is inside, finding your memories like paper gems.

After much anticipation, at least on my part, photos have started to trickle in from the trip to Scotland. I finally wised up and went to Thompson Photo down in Mechanicsville. No more Walmart, Walgreens, Kroger, cheap crap, kid with a job pushing a button and no training. Here is a tiny sampling of what is to come. Go to my Flickr page for the full gallery.

Scotland: Like A Final Breath

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:12:17 PDT

For now, as I have to get back to writing some other things, this will be the final installment on the latest Dundee trip. There is more, but you'll probably have to put a cup of coffee in front of me and hear it firsthand. Thanks for reading.

The sun rises at about 5 a.m. in the summers near the sixtieth parallel. I had brought my neon Nikes in my suitcase, and in a fit of folly I decided that the dead of night was a good time to go for a jog. I slipped them on and put my fingerless gloves over my hands, dressing in some respect like an aerobic panhandler, all neuroses and passions. I tucked Sarah’s spare set of keys into my glove and slipped out the door into the stairwell, which was dimly lit with a toady orange light. The sounds of my footsteps echoed off of the concrete walls with a muffled resonance, as if the world still had its head on the pillow. I slipped out the wooden door of the breezeway and began to run toward the silvery Tay. Paton’s Lane led me down upon Magdalen Green where rabbits lolled about chewing the shallow grass in the dark. My shoes crunched on the gravelly sidewalk and every one of the creatures froze and raised its ears, seeking for sounds. I passed the green and went on beneath the amber streetlights beside the steel girders of the Tay Railway Bridge. The current bridge sits beside the closely shorn pylons of the former one, which collapsed during a storm in 1879, killing 75 people aboard a crossing train, including the son of the bridge’s recently knighted architect. While this, even with over a century of separation, is unfathomable as a tragedy, it must be noted that the crash was immortalized in song by William McGonagall, who is often cited as the “worst poet in the English language.”

I ran on along the sea wall beside the estuary and past the grocery store and museum with the black water whispering in tiny waves at intervals as the tide pulled toward the moon. Once in a while, I would pass an orange life ring and a rescue hook hanging on the railing in case of someone drowning – either accidentally or otherwise. How many suicides are there in a city full of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and teen pregnancy? I was glad to be out that morning, but how many people were staggering through Dundee’s endless capillaries and alleys, finding their way into flats or hotel rooms or unmarked doors? I was determined to make it to the far end of the other bridge about three miles from Sarah’s apartment. I made the staircase below the bridge that led up to the long walkway across the Tay. A man sat alone in the guardhouse that looked down on the roadbed. Anemic UV lights colored his lonely room with a green tint, and he sat and watched the tiny television on the counter looking like Charon at his dreary coast. I was struck by a sudden desire to go and talk to him, perhaps to prove to myself that there was indeed life. Maybe I wanted to prove it to him. I turned my face toward the converging lines of pale streetlights that stretched out ahead of me and started to run across the wide river, following the long straight line of sidewalk and passing only one tired stranger as I jogged.

I did at last make it to Fife, all 3.3 miles, but that’s not the point of this little story – and I’m aware that the distance is not that impressive. The point is that I turned around to walk back across the bridge, and the light that had burned all night with a sapphire suggestion under the horizon of bleak Hilltown grew into a blazing dawn. A third of the way back towards the Dundee side, I had to stop. I couldn’t stare straight into the sunrise, but having run further than I’d ever run at one stretch, and that in the middle of the night, I wasn’t going to turn away until I’d seen our local star come round into view above the distant sea. The stranger I’d passed while running finally caught up with me and went on his way with the barest of nods, his ears submerged beneath headphones. I turned once to acknowledge him as he passed and then looked quickly back toward the east, and from behind the stone battlements of Broughty Castle, the light exploded outward like a solitaire.

Scotland: Queen Street Station

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:40:04 PDT

The conductor for the shuttle bus pointed all in the direction of a tiny inlet of asphalt. He rattled off instructions in a high Glasgow tongue and several of us disembarked, stepping uncertainly in the way that he indicated. The small cul-de-sac was actually a car park for cabs, several of which idled there on Woodside Way like oversized bees waiting for passengers. Above them stood a white portico with the words “Queen Street” emblazoned on the side of the grimy overhang. My luggage rattled behind me on the bricked sidewalk as I walked through the automatic sliding doors, which would have closed had their efforts not been punctuated by a steady stream of people rolling out onto the street.

Hiding its bulk behind shops and tiny stone inlets, a cathedral of transportation arched its back above the seven sets of tracks. The sun shone through the frosted glass skin of the station. People sat quietly in bunches or drank coffee or paced or plowed forward with bits of luggage in hand. The spindly ticking of bicycle wheels and the snuffling of dogs mingled with a river of human voices. My nagging loneliness from the long journey was lost in sheer amazement at this grand business of moving people. Men and women of Indian descent stood about pressing the crowds to buy cell phones. A group of German accents congregated jovially and walked through the gate to board a train. The marquee on the wall flashed its heraldic scheduling as the trains all left on time – that is to say, within fifteen seconds of the clock changing to their scheduled minute of departure. It was an impressive showing of punctuality.

I found an automated ticket machine in the breezeway outside the grandeur of the terminal. After retrieving my ticket, I decided that it was high time to get the sound of native speech in my ears again. I walked back and forth down Georges Square looking for a local dive before deciding on the pub right outside the train station. Two women who might have been mother and daughter squeezed out the thin red door under the sign advertising “The Junction Bar.” A tall, well-built young fellow with long dark hair who could have passed for an American manned the bar. A couple of old men stood at a high table working their way through several pints and laughing over business. The quickest reminder of the many tasks and problems at hand was lopsidedly planted two tables down from me. A man whose age had been furthered by drink sat and preached a stream of incoherent cursing at the invisible person in front of him, who, judging by the man’s conversation, was waffling between occasional acquiescence and outright denial. The vibe in the pub seemed to indicate that the drunken man was something of an embarrassment. He was by far the loudest representative of the clientele. I pulled my luggage up beside me at the table and glanced over the menu trying to remember the song and dance of ordering food in a foreign country. After no one came over for a while and I remembered that it is customary, in a pub, to order one’s food in person at the bar, I walked up and asked for the haggis and a pint of whatever local stout was on tap. It is always a puzzling sensation to thank God for beer. My conscience which tells me that I should pray thus also suffers from the erratic spasms and hissing fissures of legalism. But I was glad to have arrived and to eat, and sitting back with a plate of local fare and listening to conversations, I let the sense of the place – what the French call terroir – wash over me.

Taking pictures inside a public train station in a country that is beset by terrorism is not the healthiest of endeavors, but not to be deterred, I forewent dessert at the pub in lieu of finding the right shot. A man in a uniform came up to me and politely informed me that I should not take photos of the station. Understanding his concerns as a representative of the government, I left my post outside the front doors and went to take more covert photos inside the station proper where so many good shots were hidden amongst all that Euclidian architecture and steel framework. Trying to get a finger on the pulse of the country, I picked up a free independent weekly and flipped through the articles, landing on one about a British musician that had moved to Montana to find writing time away from the frenzy of recording and shows. Still, peace eluded me. Often, the Peace of Christ is something I try to find by seeking out instead of resting in. This anxiety causes me to avoid my iPod or anything else that could be entertaining in order to keep from being what Neil Postman called “amused to death.” But, finally, when I got on the train myself and discovered that, unlike in the airliners, I would be alone at my table, I acknowledged the fact that God made me a musician – and that music, to me, is much like a lubricant to the wheels of prayer. I turned up Rich Mullins in my ears and Glasgow rolled away as we entered darkness beneath her streets. The distance and movement was measured only by my body telling me that we were rocketing onward. My face stared back at me from the darkened window until, without warning, we emerged far from the crowds in golden fields of oilseed rape beneath a cobalt sky.

Scotland: The Hat Exchange

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:46:50 PDT

Not to be contradictory (although I am), but in lieu of doing an entire story like last time, I've decided to leave this as a series of smaller vignettes. If this disappoints you, know that it disappoints me as well. But, I've got some other writing to work on, and I can't have this hanging off my neck like a vampire bat. I've also got some other exciting developments coming up that I've got to get ready for, so I do hope you'll pardon my use of a smaller blog-friendly format. In our microwavable McWorld, I'm sure you won't mind. I'll try not to mind too much.

Ward Road, between the hours of midnight and 4 o’clock, is a thoroughfare of debauchery. Modesty whispers unnoticed from every young lady’s closet, and what little clothing makes it onto the street is outmatched by bare skin in sheer volume. London, a smaller club which is infamous for its admission of minors, spills out into the road to the immediate northeast of Central Baptist Church, its crowds barking at the edge of riot. To the east is a short walk to Fat Sam’s, Social, Liquid, Déjà vu, and a host of other establishments.

Our group, of which I was the youngest by far, walked back onto the street at about 2:30 a.m., gathering around the hatchback of Andy’s car, where we set up shop giving out free tea, coffee, and hot chocolate to anyone who would accept it. We also gave out flip-flops to any girls who had tired of navigating the broken sidewalks in torturous three-inch heels. It truly is an amazing feeling to give things away to people who don’t deserve it. This is harsh to modern ears, but to approach the truth, we must understand that none of us deserve anything good. Certainly, when we are drunkenly staggering about the street and vomiting the curses of repressed disappointment onto any and all bystanders, we do not deserve a free hot drink, free shoes, and a patient and open ear. Gary, Andy, and I walked up and down in the throng, attempting, with perhaps a surprising degree of success, to convey that there was something helpful to be had at no cost. I walked on toward the blue neon lights of London and asked around.

“Do you guys want a free coffee or cup of tea?”
“Wha’?”
“Coffee,” I persisted. “We’ve got free coffee and tea just down at that silver car.”

This exchange sometimes ended in the dulcet tones that nothing is free and that we must be peddling something, though, looking back, I hope it was never us doing the peddling. A young fellow ran by and snatched my hat off my head as I was talking to some people. He never turned, but placed it on his own head, ran down the street a bit, mooned me, and continued on toward parts unknown. The two girls I was talking to, presumably out with the young opportunist, apologized profusely. I thought of Jesus saying, “If someone takes what is yours, do not demand it back.” In my head, I heard it voiced by Gerald Lay, who played Jesus in a passion play at my parents’ church years ago. I wandered toward the car, hoping that the guy would decide that the joke was over and bring it back. After a while, he and his friends did come back in our direction.

“Is that your hat?” said Andy, seeing him.
"Yep,” I said, feeling that old pride creep up that I had not said anything to that point. It was all a bit funny.
“Did you give it to him?” Andy asked, wide-eyed.
“No.”

Then the Irishman in Andy took over, and he strode mission-mindedly after the drunken young man, returning a few minutes later with a somewhat crumpled version of my wide-brim hat. I would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall for their brief conversation.

The sky began to suggest dawn as 3:45 rolled past, and the crowds began to dissipate. There had been no riots between the marines and the police, and we thanked God that the night had been rather peaceful, considering. The ladies with us, a quiet, cheerful, and diligent bunch, began to pack up the milk and sugar and cups with an industry that flew in the face of the late hour. We carried everything back across the street and into the office to do the washing up and to pray. The streets, as we left the office, were astonishingly, quiet. A few rogue seagulls tossed on the early morning wind above countless bits of paper and old fish and chip boxes that littered the pavement. Not a soul moved in the street beyond ourselves as we bid each other goodbye and I got into Andy’s car.

“You know people who talk about second-mile Christians,” he quipped as we drove to Paton’s Lane, “I think you’re maybe a third or fourth-mile Christian.” This was in reference to my doggedness in staying up late and getting up early – though “early” is debatable – in the past week. Though my tirelessness was more akin to stupidity and stubbornness than to any sort of righteous industry, I mentally added our small conversation to a short list of comments that I won’t soon forget.

Scotland: Decompression

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:53:27 PDT

It's Saturday now. I got back in the States Wednesday night, and I still haven't had the time to decompress. Like a shelf with one bookend, I have several volumes of experience from the past two weeks, held up on one side by multiple gatherings with the rest of the team. We prayed, talked, sang, took communion, and rehearsed some light sketches. I felt, for the first time, decently prepared. Now, I am staring at the latter end, and hoping that the books don't topple into a useless heap. I need that pause for reflection, and I need to write it all down - to write the Hell out of it, and dwell graciously on the Heaven that is left after editing. That's probably not accurate theology per se, but I think it's a pretty good writing assignment.

Hopefully Sunday and this evening will provide the time that I need to work through this. I have been and shall be doing something I've not often done before: praying over my writing. A friend at work told me that, if I'm going to write something about this trip (as I have before; see A Diary of Dundee), she'd like to read it. I have to laugh at myself that the Holy Ghost should need to nudge me to do what I'd like to do anyway. So, when I have it all compiled (I hope it won't take more than a week), I'll post it here as a finale to the "Scotland" series. I hope you don't mind some repeated events; I don't want to break up the continuity of the narrative.

Oh, and pictures are coming.

Scotland: Drama in Lochee

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:27:13 PDT

Somewhere, deep in the Dundonian labyrinth that is the neighborhood of Lochee, half our team spent our afternoon and evening with thirty local kids - playing games, singing songs, doing crowd control, talking about Christ, doing more crowd control, etc. It's one of those mixed blessings to throw out your voice on the afternoon of the first big day trying to sing over thirty rambunctious youngsters without a microphone, and then to have God give you the ability to continue singing on into the even times. We shall suffice the medical assessment to say my throat hurts. But, to grander things we go.

The highlight of the evening, for me, was finally getting the kids quiet enough to make rain. I think this is something Rich Mullins used to do at his concerts (sort of in the "Hallelu, Hallelu" format), but my friend Nathan showed it to me and I've enjoyed the time ever since. If you're ever due to be in front of a crowd with time on your hands, ask me about making rain. The most interesting part was that, after our meeting, some kids pointed out to me that - almost whimsically, I think - it was actually raining. Thank God, the jokes on me.

We did a couple of our dramatic sketches, and I'm still a bit in the dark on how I feel about that. Drama itself is a tool, so we know that it is indeed fallible. I'm not really certain of the Scriptural parameters surrounding drama in corporate worship. I keep leaning towards a biblical study on worship, but I know that twenty people will instantly recommend fifty books to me on the subject. It is a short list indeed of people whose literary recommendations I follow. Ditto with films. Those books might have to go on the stack of must-reads - somewhere beneath a good novel. Wind in the Willows and Gilead, I think.

Scotland: Riding The Train

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:02:31 PDT

"Nobody tells you, when you get born here
How much you'll come to love it and how you'll never belong here."

How much can one drink in with one's eyes? How long can you keep open those two windows we are all born with?

Lindsay and Iain were apologetic that I had to take a train from Glasgow, that no one was there to pick me up at the airport. But their apologies fell on the ears of a man greatly blessed. How can you describe a countryside where you feel that you cannot widen your soul enough to take in all its beauty, where you feel as if every stone, every blade of grass, every patch of dirt, every drop of water, is pregnant with significance beyond the stuttering conveyance of any human tongue? I turned on Andrew Peterson in my iPod and glued my face to the window on the southern side of the train.

The wind raced us over the lowlands past astonishingly yellow fields of rapeseed in bloom, past a young roe buck wandering the tracts of a farmer's field, past rabbits that lolloped in meadows wiggling their ears and noses in their secret language. And in the distance between Perth and Dundee, rainbow after brilliant rainbow fell from wandering storms that scattered the impossibly cerulean sky, ringing of the colors of that final ephod, affixed with the stones of the tribes. I had to work to keep from weeping in front of the other passengers.

What contrast, that hearts so bleak can reside in lands that so profoundly call one to wander the lonely road to Love - lands on both sides of the Atlantic. It was my prayer that I would be given eyes to see the beauty in souls (including potential beauty) as I so quickly see it in lands that will one day be swept away. O, God's great love of beauty! If that which is visible and will be destroyed is so great among creation, how much more that which is invisible, how much greater that which is indelible. May we have eyes in our spirits to see that "which will never pass away," and in the midst of a land where "not one stone will be left upon another," to be diligent in laying up treasures "where moth and rust do not destroy."

The Enemy's Schemes

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:55:16 PDT

“There is nothing new under the sun.” ¹

If I chance to leave the confines of my house, or look at the flyers persistently adorning my front door, or happen to peruse Craigslist in pursuit of musical jobs (hint, hint), I am greeted with ubiquitous announcements that there are new churches starting. They convene in warehouses, abandoned storefronts, coffee shops, buildings borrowed from other churches, and virtually any space that can accommodate a stage-and-audience arrangement and be cheaply appropriated. This is wonderful in terms of the Gospel being sown over wider and wider fields. Yet, what Gospel do we sow when our claim is upon something new? To be frank, the Gospel itself is older than time. It is the music and the models and the slapstick efforts at what is often termed “relevancy” that are fancied as new.

There is much danger to be encountered in attending church because of an interesting type of music or a clever way of ordering the service. There is probably even danger – greater danger, if we are honest – in attending church because of an engaging sermon. Is there anything wrong with any of these? Certainly not. They are tools and vehicles. They are supernatural two-way roads that lead us in one direction or the other. The danger is when we, as we are so apt to do, lose the perspective on our wandering hearts. We forget to ask for wisdom and discernment. We forget to ask the Father to “Show [us] if there is any offensive way in [us], and lead [us] in the way everlasting.” ² Music and sermons and surprises are powerful emotional vehicles that are more tangible, in our fallen state, than is our God. When we do not meditate on the character of God as these things hold sway over us, we are hastily prone to give the praise stored up in our hearts to that which is seen or heard or sensually experienced, as opposed to him whose “worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” ³ That is how music becomes “a clanging cymbal.” ⁴ That is how sermons become “rules taught by men.” ⁵ We cannot blame the musician or the preacher for what our hearts do with what our ears hear. These men and women are fallen as well, but “the soul who sins is the soul who will die.” ⁶ “Above all, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” ⁷

As a sometime worship leader, I am probably more prone than most to give credence to songs instead of to the Creator of music. I must be distrustful of my heart – that lump of flesh within me that beats life into my limbs, that seat of cataclysmic emotion that is “deceitful above all things.” ⁸ That sounds rather harsh, especially when all the world would tell you to follow your heart. Indeed, “the desires of your heart” are laid there by God himself when you are surrendered to his will. ⁹ But, here again, we must be clay in his loving hands, thrown again and again upon the hard stone of the potter’s wheel, thinned with water and warmed with chastening friction until we are supple and ready for beauty. Therein, beyond the crumbly iron fringes of our human wills, is a beauty that sits rightfully at the feet of the One who is himself Beauty.

¹ Ecclesiastes 1:9
² Psalm 139:24
³ John 4:24
⁴ I Corinthians 13:1
⁵ Isaiah 29:13
⁶ Ezekiel 18:20
⁷ Proverbs 4:23
⁸ Jeremiah 17:9
⁹ Psalm 37:4

Andy Vandergriff, Action Bowler

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:50:33 PDT

From the Writer's Almanac

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:30:24 PDT

I try to make a habit of listening to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac whenever I'm near a radio at ten till twelve on weekdays. Today's serving of poetry was so iconic and pointed, that I had to put it here for you. It's a poem by Anne Porter, widow of the late American painter, Fairfield Porter.

Music
by Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother's piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I've never understood
Why this is so

Bur there's an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

The S. S. Nameless

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:17:20 PDT

It has been nigh upon a week since I have plugged my retinas in to the world wide web. This past week has been a hodgepodge of going to work and catching up with all the work on the home front. The circadian tasks of mowing, hoeing, planting, and watering have given the gift of a slow two-step to my hesitant bones. It's spring, says creation to my senses. Put your fingers in the dirt.

I've felt rather thinly spread as of late. My chores are piling up like little dragons that want slaying. So, in the interest of slowing down, putting my nose to fewer grindstones, writing, and gardening, here is a vignette I jotted down recently.

I am inescapably American. It crops up in my nagging addiction to conveniences. Like microwaves and the internet, my default timeframe shouts, "Now!" like Veruca Salt at a toy shop. So, after expending a great deal of time and energy riding my bicycle and the bus to work (not to mention mooching countless rides from friends, neighbors, and my dear longsuffering wife), you can imagine my elation at buying a new car. A couple of old friends had a nameless land yacht sitting around, waiting for the world to turn. So we, in the interest of expediency, put down some money towards it. But the convenience began to go to my head.

I was able to fit more into my days. Long jaunts to rehearsals across town no longer conjured up visions of me pedaling for hours, dodging angry motorists with an accordion strapped to my back. So, I gladly accepted invitation after invitation, and forgot the hidden graces and quiet blessings of a necessary longevity - of a requisite patience. O, to ride the bus and spare oneself the ability to arrive faster by racing harder. O, to sit on those rumbly seats in the din-full corridors of public transportation and meet people who hail from the distant planets next door. I met clowns and paupers and clergymen and politicians. I was given a finger on the pulse of the city, a cross-section of the virtue, vice, and vitriol that ran through the hearts of all my neighbors. Would that I could also refuse engagements out of mere necessity. "No, I'm sorry," I would say, "I have no way to get there." And then I would tend to flowers and vegetables, or bake bread or write poetry or music.

But now we have a second car - a nameless Oldsmobile chugging gasoline across every mile. I shall be a great deal more thankful when there is a carseat in the back and convenience plays host to the need of taking the kids to their grandparents' house. But there are good sides to it already. Its wide seats have seen hitchhikers. Its power windows have been lowered to feel the wind as the city's cadence blew in to my ears. And the drive back home from work is worlds away from a two-hour commute after eight hours of slinging coffee. In all honesty, I will have to learn to manage my time more prudently (including my Sabbaths). I'm going to need to practice my "No." This new car (new to us) wants christening. I'm thinking of calling it Nimitz.

Even All Things

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:00:39 PDT

Easter morning, I awoke to the lilting sound of mockingbirds enshrining the backyard in song. The sun, soft and golden in the cold clean air of the dawn, whispered his temporal light through the bedroom curtains.

"Arise, and know that he is risen."

I've never been one to enjoy a holiday. To me, the celebration and circumstance has usually outshone (or overshadowed) the essence of the occasion. But this morning, I awoke to the earth quietly rejoicing in his name. I kissed my sleeping wife and left before eight, almost giddy at the prospect of lending organ and accordion to the music at Greg Adkins' church. Ever since the church acquired a Hammond B-3 with a Leslie cabinet, I've been almost jittery in anticipation of playing there. For one thing, I worship better with an instrument beneath my fingers. For another, I think that both my accordion (Mabel is her name) and the Hammond are resurrection stories in themselves. The organ is actually on loan from Danny Rosenbaum, a fellow whose name crops up now and then in conjunction with other old New City Cafe names. But the organ itself predates Danny. It predates my parents. Its story is one that I do not know, but it indeed has a story to tell. This year, that story entered the chapter of resurrection.

Mabel also predates my parents. Who knows her history? She hails from Italy, and certainly languished in at least one garage or attic in her time (probably several, truth be told), wondering when she would again find her voice. She found her way to my mother-in-law's music classroom at the hands of a man who simply didn't want the thing taking up space anymore. I fixed a couple of keys, and she has new straps. And again, through the radio and over the internet, she has traversed great distances and played in the hearts of people. A new chapter, resurrection.

May we, the languishing, the dead, the overspent, find new birth at his hands. May he grant that we should be the tools of his workmanship. May the songs we bear extend from his heart.

The Longest Saturday

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:28:21 PDT

9 a.m. rolled out of the western sky on Good Friday and reminded us all what it was like on that ancient day. The sky darkened and furled its brow, lightning cackled back and forth and a gale caught up the torrents of rain and tossed them sideways. The earth itself remembered the death of its maker as twisters sauntered around the southeast. And then, there came Saturday.

The long day, when those few huddled behind locked doors and their world – our world – stood at a dead and apathetic calm. Too fearful and too shocked to venture forth, I can only guess at their stunted conversations and waxen stares. The weather seemed to oblige us again today, with clouds gazing ambivalently from a directionless sky. The sun has occasionally snuck a peek from his high castle keep before hiding again. The world both hangs in wait and buzzes onward with its forgetful motion. How it must have seemed then. Rome went about its business. The Pharisees remembered their Sabbath, mostly in the pompous manner they had kept with for so long. Ships came and went at Tarshish. Pagan merchants caravanned across the Negev. But a few dour faces in Jerusalem waited in the dark doldrums of their grief.

Across town now, the mall drones with activity. The interstate is a whirlwind of trucks and travelers dodging the glaring orange barrels. People buy and sell, eat and drink. But some deep part of all creation still waits for tomorrow.

Simon is Surprised

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:12:25 PST

One of the most unnerving things about miracles is that no excuse is made for them. I'm not talking about the straw-grasping scientific conjecture which attempts to explain the inexplicable. I mean the paranormal. We as a people are a bit obsessed with the paranormal. Maybe its our overarching fear of death, that immaterial border beyond which empirical though cannot reach. Perhaps we simply have a fascination with the fantastical. I suspect that both of these are true, and yet miracles do not subscribe to either characteristic. In the most immediate terms, they just are what they are.

Besides the important context in which Jesus performed miracles (although "performed" is not a great translation; the Greek "ginomai," translated "performed" in Matthew 11:20, has more in common with bringing something into being than with performance in the modern Western sense of the word), there is a conspicuous absence of taboo or spooky language. There are no creaking floors or clanking chains. Jacob Marley and the spectral King Hamlet are nowhere to be found.

A virgin is pregnant. It is no wonder that Mary asks "How can this be?" as if she were asking how a stopwatch worked. Her frame of reference for God is firmly rooted in reality, not the deception of light shows and wand-waving, much as I enjoy Harry Potter and find a pressing sense of Gospel truth woven amongst its narratives. Mary's character, as spoken by Gabriel in Luke 1:28 and revealed by her submissiveness to God ten verses later, stands in stark contrast to that of the superstitious Simon the Sorcerer. Simon, according to Acts 8, had made a long enough career out of amazing people with magic for word about to spread throughout Samaria. He seemed to think that the movement of the Holy Ghost was more akin to a magic trick than to the genuine and immediate action of the Divine.

Surrounding miracles, the language of the Scriptures is rather journalistic in its sparseness. What was water is now wine. A blind man sees. A leper is made whole. A dead man is quickened. There are no wands or flourishes. There is no spooky music.

This Too

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:13:43 PST

"Behold, I am making all things new."
Revelation 21:5

Since about the year 2000, when I began to be a part of the New City Community in Knoxville with some regularity, I have been increasingly immersed in dialogue about and surrounded by the action of redeeming culture. In my own cynicism toward the church, an attitude which I have regretfully done more to disseminate than I have to debunk, I neglected and sometimes rejected the idea that the Western church and her often silly sub-culture could even be redeemed. To me, she was a grown woman, holding the scruffy remnants of old gaudy dresses over her figure in the looking glass, fantasizing about the glory days. I still speak sometimes as if I'm not a servant on this storm-tossed ship, as if I'm not terrorized enough by billows and gales to wake Jesus in the bow and scream, "Do something!"

In our seeking for a church, in our strained and distracted attempts to listen for the quiet breath of the Holy Ghost, Kat and I have walked through expressions of corporate worship like wings in an art museum. We have sung, studied, taken communion, prayed, supped, rejoiced, and lamented with people from a couple handfuls of backgrounds. In all of them, I have seen the working of Christ. I have seen the rivers of grace flow through hearts, clearing the jetsam of flood and storm until the banks are clean. It has been humbling to watch the limits that I imagined for God's grace fall.

This past two weeks, we have attended a church that, for all practical purposes, puts on a rock concert every Sunday. Now, I don't use this terminology lightly, having been to enough rock concerts to know the difference. But when, to go with your music, you break out the fog machine, the gobos, the down-looking-up camera angles, and did I mention the fog machine, you have a rock concert. My inborn distrust of all things done in Dog-and-Pony-show style has put the rock show as corporate worship experience fairly low on my list. Now, I've taken part in good preparation and worship with a back beat. I've even taken part in the rock show as worship, especially at student retreats. And musically, I worship more easily with an instrument in my hands. So this probably sounds quite hypocritical. In truth, that's accurate. But it's not accurate for the reasons you might think. More than condemning something with my words and blessing it with my actions (which is a way of further crippling the culture), I have doubted the power of God to redeem, to "seek and to save that which was lost."

Standing in the auditorium today, I couldn't help but hear him say, "This too, shall be made well." And now I can't help but remember Paul telling Titus that "to the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and their consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good," and also speaking about those "having a form of godliness but denying its power." (2 Tim 3:5)

So God is the God who redeems fog machines. And gobos. And for those of you who don't have a clue what a gobo is, next time you see a spinning light design on the back wall or the stage floor, you'll know. Now, if we could just get some in every house church in China, the world would be a better place.