Quill Upon the Paper

It is my great pleasure to present...

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:52:00 +0000

... a brand new record, Letters from Sinclair's Eve. And not only that, but a brand new website: Adamwhipple.com! Plus, you are entitled to a FREE DOWNLOAD from the new EP.

What does all of this mean? Yes, sadly, it means that we shall bid a fond adieu to Quill Upon the Paper. It has been our means of communication, the formica-topped diner table over which we've shared coffee, for some 7 years, and we shall miss it. Heretofore though, all notices, articles, and wanted posters shall be plastering the walls of the new site. The fantastic part is that our new web stomping grounds has room for music, blogging, photographs, a store, and other things I've only dreamed of. Like any new house, we'll settle into it.

Letters from Sinclair's Eve is a five-song EP that has grown out of the intimate and haunted grounds of recording at home. It is a testament to the patience and holy encouragement on the part of my wife to see the dining 'nook' at our house populated by a grimly determined old upright, a small and crackly Kimball organ, and stacks upon stacks of instruments in and out of their cases, all hoping for that great day when we get a room to ourselves where they don't get swoopingly put away like the playthings in the Velveteen Rabbit. I spent the course of several months stuffed into this cleft in the rock, sidling up to the piano and dangling mics from the chandelier, hoping to see the back of the Almighty. What started out as a set of demos turned into something new altogether. A four-star chef offering to buy squash from one's kitchen garden would not be far from the mark. It seemed odd as the inklings of the main idea trickled in, but it had a mind of its own.

After many late nights, I packed up these little orphan songs and trotted them across town to Dylen Terflinger, hoping that we could scrub behind their ears and dress them up nice. Dylen was most encouraging, and visibly excited, and we put the music through the wringer, waiting for the gems on the other side. My deepest heartfelt thanks to both the inimitable Dylen of KnoxSound Studios for mixing the record and to the indefatigable Jeremy LaDuke for designing, building, and hosting the website.

Brave New Changes

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:56:00 +0000

Approaching.....like a photon torpedo.

Faith of Our Fathers

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:18:00 +0000

This is an entry that I wrote a little over a month ago, then put under my pillow, wondering if it would be worthwhile to post it. It is somewhat revealing, you might say, but I think it might be all the more worthwhile for that.

I turned the radio on in the bathroom today, in a move of errant whimsy.

Occasionally, I will listen to preaching on the local station that airs that sort of thing. They also deign to play Christian call-in radio shows as well, which gives me pause. How did those begin? Presumably, most people call in because they've heard the host giving helpful advice to other callers. But who was the first caller who thought he'd take a shot and dial up Dr. First-Name-Only (there's a red flag) and see what he had to say? There are very few logical Books of Genesis, so to speak, for call-in radio shows, and I daresay most of the explanations are dubious.

However, this time, there was a pastor on who was preaching about something-or-other. Having heard many of these fellows, I recognized his tone and the cadence of his language, and it struck me as encouraging a doctrine of fear. Not Fear and Trembling, mind you, just fear. Fear of the current culture (or, arguably, the lack thereof) and fear of the degenerative social norms seemed to be the flavors of the day. I turned off the radio with a mixture of disgust and humorous pity, and a terrible thought came to my mind which had been brewing for days.

It began, or at least surfaced, when my friend and I went to see Transformers 3, the title of which tells you most of what you need to know. We entered the theatre on July 3rd, and exited on July 4th. The three hours in between were packed with a sugary conflux of explosions, larger-than-life robots, a busty heroine, miniature soliloquies on freedom and justice, and more American flags than can be counted. I went home, slept, and the next morning, read the Declaration of Independence, the Mayflower Compact, an essay by Cotton Mather, and an excerpt by Christopher Columbus. All this transpired as, a few miles away, downtown was preparing for a celebration in which the 1812 Overture would be played in time with a deafening fireworks display. Now, I enjoy fireworks, but compared to a reading of the Declaration of Independence - which would attract far fewer patriots to a public park - explosions for fun seem rather lowbrow. In this decidedly snobby frame of mind, it occurred to me that the founding fathers, so often lauded by people who have never taken the time to read their work, might not have been people of simple faith.

Simple and Complex, I thought. Some people have Simple Faith, and some have Complex Faith. People who are high logical, as the founding fathers of necessity certainly were, might find themselves wrestling with angels more, as it were. The thinking man, by definition, has more questions. Obviously, I knew which side my bread was buttered on. I was highly logical, I thought. My faith was Complex. This is, by the way, not a pretty story.

Two things came to mind that countered this elitist cognition. The first was the remonstrance of Paul to the Roman church. "Who are you to judge some other master's servant?" he chides them. "To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for God is able to make him stand."

Perhaps we should not call these flavors of faith simple and complex. In the best sense, they are like bridge designs, I suppose. Over the same chasm can stretch both the Roman aqueduct, stalwart and grizzled as some old sea dog, and the spindly steel harp strings of the suspension bridge. When I hear those words - simple and complex - roll off my tongue though, I cannot help but recall the poignance of the second thing which came to mind.

Jesus drew a child out of the crowd, as if picking a daisy, and juxtaposed him against the righteous swagger and belch of the disciples. Unless you become like this, you won't be a part. The subjects of the King are all like children. He didn't elaborate, but it is striking how simple a child's faith is. There are hard questions, certainly, but the child's faith is never convoluted through a series of pathetically dusty dogmas and intellectual backflips.

As my pastor put it, following Jesus is simple, but not easy.

Why Fiction?

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 03:02:00 +0000

I love nightly walks around my neighborhood, when the summer sky can't go dark but holds out an aching blue note of twilight while the the moon glitters like a diamond. I am given to occasionally making these walks barefoot, relishing the cool of the ground in the dark beyond a blazing day. My feet will get black and scuffed from the road, but as I pad across the terra firma, overhung with the boughs of oak and elm, I am reminded that I am connected to this earth, that I am part of it, that it affects me and I it in the awkward grace of our dance. One of us wobbles and reels while the other staggers and shuffles. We each step on the other's feet, but we keep cutting our seven-step rhythm, she gamboling about the heavens and I scribbling in little journals.

In the business of writing, I constantly try to convince myself that it isn't worth the bother. Thankfully, in this regard, I'm not the best of the Devil's advocates. Either that or there are few twelve-step programs to break an addiction to wordsmithing. Continually, though, I trip over the question, "Why?" Why do I do this? For me? Probably. For fame? Probably. For the service of Truth which is the source of and permeates all reality, superseding it with a Glory that would destroy us were it not veiled? Um. That's a question I have to admit I'm not qualified to answer, although the previous two reasons have thus far proven rather unfruitful in some blessed measure. As a reader of fiction, though, this is a far easier survey to take. The more I read fiction, the more I know why I read it. Pure enjoyment and sometimes escapism give way to the interior magnitude of stories, lending scope to the cramped exterior of reality. In a culture of almost diabolical sunderedness between people who, via the internet and cell phones, trade digital summaries for actual personal encounters, fiction reminds us of the sheer unplumbed size of the created world. In that respect, odd as it may seem, fiction gives us truth. Immersed in it, it starts to characterize the way we view the world. It is a waking dream that eventually forces us to look again at the seemingly obvious in front of us.

Good fictional characters become a sort of hagiography of all the real characters in our lives. That girl who had a miscarriage in chapter nine is your sister when you blink a couple of times, though its not so much through empathy as through the suspension of disbelief. When we open ourselves to fiction, to the idea that anything could happen, people - dare I say, inevitably? - become more than the sum of their parts, their quirks, their jobs, and their political leanings. They literally thrum with possibility and hope. You can even hear it in tragic characters like Brett and Jake in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, rattling in between the lines of their dogged and pathetic semi-loyalty to each other and crackling pleasantly in Jake's humor at his own injury. If there is hope and possibility singing in the lives of these ink-and-paper human sacrifices, these mortal ephemera, then the Puckish gleam of curiosity will quietly ask, "What about the guy across the hall from me?"

Or, as C. S. Lewis put it, "You have never met a mere mortal."

Every marginal encounter on the street or in the cereal aisle is the brushing of shoulders between two souls robed in flesh, two immortals sashaying blithely through temporal possibility of Grace or otherwise. This is a role of fiction: to remind us of the unbearably imminent humanity - and the iconic Antecedent of the humanity - of our friends and cohorts, of our enemies and rulers. As Saint Paul put it, "Some have entertained angels without knowing it." You probably can't write that kind of character intentionally. At least, I can't, but in honest writing it seems to happen on its own. Because you probably can't do it intentionally, this is not a practical reason to write fiction, though it may be a very good reason to write it. Even better, it's a reason to read it. It is a joyous thought against the cynical backdrop of crying, "Lies," though, and that's reason enough to scribble and scuttle over paper every day.

Live against the stunted egotism of the denouncing of joy.

Where Have You Been?

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:32:00 +0000

God is not concerned with where you have been. He loves you here and now.

This is a paraphrase of so much of what we, the Church, are preaching, at least in the West. The God we serve is not concerned with our past, with our sins of yesterday, with our baggage and our mess. Our manifesto is that of an animal: exclusively concerned with the present. An animal does not know much about Then, but only Now. This can be helpful in a number of ways, I would bet, given the Pharisaical stigma attached to the church. People anticipate being labeled and misunderstood at church. That’s the expectation we’ve earned. It’s been there so long the jokes have grown old. Go to some other church in another city, or turn on the AM preaching station for several hours, and you’re liable to hear the same comedic bombshells plunk across the airwaves.

“I know I’ve got to finish or the Methodists will get to Don Pablo’s first.”
“There’s room at the cross, but not on the back pew with the deacons.”
“The young folks are doing interpretive movement; we don’t dance here, I know.”

The lines have grown stale and musty, and well they should. Our pitifully backward concern with getting scoured and scrubbed up, “prayed up,” dressed up, and regimented up enough to come to the table of the Lord forgets the pointed story of the wedding guests. This one had some pressing business, this one a car to buy, this one was leaving town. “I’m sorry, I must…” ran the flippant backward glance, the parting shot that they all tossed over their shoulders like so much salt for good luck. I cannot come, instead I must do elsewise. So the master sends for anyone and everyone. The servants round up a couple necking in the park, a man riding the bus just to have something to do, an iron and square-framed business woman who just got demoted, a teacher, a midshipman, the miller’s scrawny lad, a mother and her daughter swept from the market with bread and celery in hand, the town drunk, and a man who can’t help but talk in rhymes. They tote them all out to the mansion, gathering the surprised and the curious along the way.

We, in our expectation of cleanliness, forget this. We forget that cleanliness is only next to godliness in one drastically limited sense. Any parent who has wiped smeared cake from the face of a gleeful birthday boy has glimpsed the limits of the virtue of cleanliness. For he who wraps himself in zeal and lightning as a garment also bore the tongue-in-cheek purple of a mocking robe soon to be snatched and gambled away while he was beaten. The man himself died for all so that we might not be afraid to come to him. “How I have long to gather you,” he said, looking out over the city, the bitter turn of the bread of sorrow already on his tongue.

How then, can we say that Christ has no concern over our past? To say this is to render moot the bloodshed of the Rood, the parched throat and labored breathing, the betrayal in the garden, the silent refusal to defend himself, and the forgiveness he gave despite it all. Jesus came to die because of my past, my present, and my time to come. Necessitated by the very Love that hovered over void and formless water, then went jubilating the world into being, he sees at once all the time which I occupy. My past has not slipped his mind. Neither my tomorrow.

This device of acceptance – God not being concerned with your past – is not acceptance at all. To accept me without my faults is to accept me in part, to look at me as perfect by my own half-merit, without the blood of Jesus washing me clean. Love is not that easy, though. Simple, but not easy. If family life teaches us anything, it teaches us that love is rarely earned and never convenient. It is not because God is absentminded and needs an extra dose of Ginkgo Biloba that he accepts me, it is because He Loves me. In the course of time, he will bring me to face boldly the horrors of that very past that I trawl behind me like the polluted train of a wedding gown.

We are so concerned with everyone feeling accepted that we obfuscate the rules of acceptance, but the human heart will drag its dirty laundry with it everywhere until it is washed and put in order. Everyone comes with a hobble around his neck, and to say that when you come to church that you have left that behind you is an insult to the indefatigable memory of the subconscious and the unfathomed knowledge of God. I’ve been in worship services and been encouraged to leave my cares at the door. I believe that little could be further from the desires of the Almighty. A Hebrew towing an obstinate goat – indeed, a scapegoat – through the gates of the temple would certainly understand taking his sins and cares to church, and I think that was the intention. The Architect of that institution desired that we should understand the picture painted before us. Yes, we are come that He may deal with us, but He will deal with us in Love. It is not love in some vapid iteration of, “All is forgiven,” but Love which asks again, and then again, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Yes, bring your past. He fears nothing, for none is His equal. Do not be afraid.

Inspiration

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 05:15:00 +0000

This is some of the most beautiful, mournful work I've ever heard. It is by a young, masterful composer named Eric Whitacre. Carve out a few minutes. Get out your good headphones or good speakers, go into a quiet room, and immerse yourself in this sound. Then go back, and immerse yourself in it again. Every nuance and cherished note has poetry and truth to offer and to reveal.

Sleep by ericwhitacre

Language: An Ancient Tree

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:35:00 +0000

"Which ones are right?" Donna asks me.

I glance over the slides on the computer screen.

"This one needs to change, and this one," I tell her. "Oh, and this one. I can't stand the ________ Hymnal."

"Don't they use the same hymns?"

"Well, they change them, to make them more understandable to a modern audience."

A familiar sight nowadays for those who read antiquated writing is the editorial process, eradicating commas and superfluous dashes like the little man behind the curtain. Pay no attention to him. I am the Great Oz. Yet, if we are not careful, we will be lulled into the loss of a language that is our heritage and runs in our blood. This is not, of course, popular. Modern folks don't like to admit that there are any strings attached to them, old, new, or yet to come. We like our so-called individuality, erroneous though it may be. "It takes a village to raise a child," goes the saying, but adults are not done being raised. We have an attachment to others, past and present, and we need it.

The reason editors, especially of hymnals and prayer books, do their well-meaning level best to disrupt this, is to provide us with sacred and venerated literature that is easy to understand. That's certainly helpful to those of us who are not scholars of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Old High German, Middle English, Elizabethan English, Victorian syntax, and a host of other near-impregnable tongues and dialects that give shape to our history. Recently, I read my way through a theological work by George MacDonald (1824-1905), excellently edited by Michael Phillips. Syntactically, it was thick enough to read as it stood. I cannot imagine the difficulty without Phillips' help, though he gives some examples for reference.

However, with documents for corporate worship, and, I might summon the gumption to imagine, with the Scriptures (though that is certainly far above my head), the 'dumbing-down' of the language, by degrees and over time, dumbs down the congregation. Consider a quote by Madeleine L'Engle:

When I asked why, in the Prayer Book General Thanksgiving, God's inestimable love had been changed to immeasurable love, I was told that the laity found inestimable difficult. That's pretty condescending, in the nastiest sense of the word. Immeasurable is not simpler than inestimable, and in the context of that glorious prayer of Thanksgiving it is a weaker word. When I asked a multi-PhD-ed clergyman why the quick and the dead had been changed to the living and the dead, I was told that young people did not know the word, quick. I asked, "How are they going to know if you take it away from them?"

-Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons and Idols

What a great question. How will we ever learn the formal weight of "Thee" and "Thou" if they are replaced by "You" and "You," which not only use the same over-saturated word to express different parts of speech, but a word that we use to refer to ourselves in the informal? The differences are subtle, but over time they regraft our thinking like a grapevine to a trellis. No, L'Engle goes on to say, language should not be stunted. It is alive and should grow, but "the manipulation of language by the academic elite because they underestimate the ordinary, faithful churchgoer" is an objectionable thing. I would go on to say that a tree, growing larger in its bole year after year, does not leave the inner bark behind. Take a tree apart, and you will find that the inner bark had long ago become the scaffold by which the entire structure stood erect through gust and gale. So it is with language. To abandon the linguistic bastions of old, because some publisher thinks less of the intellect of the general public, is to speak a hollow tongue without meaning or poetry.

To recall the weight of He suffereth long over He is patient is to give credence to the truth that patience is a form of suffering, something that it makes us cringe to think. See the longing, however, of autistic kids' parents for a day without strife and stress, and see the longing of the children for a day of un-frustrated communication, and you will see that there is suffering in patience, and in love. This is only one of the ways that antiseptic language shift misdirects our thought, but the examples are manifold.

How amazing of children, though, to learn one word as quickly as another, even at a late age. Teach a teenager that "to know," in King James' parlance, means "to have sex with," and you have opened the door to a realm of understanding about intimate love that all the abstinence curriculum in the world never could. Yet as adults, with our underestimation of children's ability to learn, we often assume that our ability is not even so fresh and ready as theirs, though it is both ready and armed with greater experience.

Let not ship of thy attention run afoul on the slothful rocks.

Mexican Rice Missionary

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 24 May 2011 02:22:00 +0000

My creative energies have been spent on a few all-consuming projects as of late. They've also taken, it must be admitted, an occasional backseat to things like mowing the yard and doing the washing-up. I have poured them into my family as well, and that has been more valuable an expenditure than anything measured in silver and coin, though I confess I'm not yet stout enough to look those particular virtues in the eyes. Still, spinning spoons at the stovetop like some desperate vaudeville dreamer, I've conjured a few tasty gems out of spices, butter, and humble tubers. These dishes and their ilk find their way to the dinner table, where two lovely ladies with no company affiliations, no accolades, smile and savor the God-given fare. Such is the ritual here it Sinclair's Eve.

And the world never measures it.

Everyone recalls how Mama made that beef casserole, and you rarely hear the World complain that such stuff is of no account, even though it be outside the grasp of empirical knowledge and reckoning. In this, perhaps, the World knows it has little chance of victory, and so it wisely remains silent. In this, the unsung creativity of people for their families, the World meets a fell nemesis.

I have spent many a minute lately pondering and postulating over the nervous figures surrounding CD sales, photography purchases, and bookbinding. Yet these are only the treacherous waters of getting art and its stories to you, so you may take art home and write the next chapters, as it were. In the end, it is still one of us telling the story to the other, who listens with fertile ears.

Here at home, Mexican rice and chicken is recognized by no printed review, but it's inspired by the same Holy Ghost who billows the temple curtains and shuffles spookily across the attic floor of my soul. I find the laundry, the dinner table, the yard, and the communion of storytime to be a mission field. And like so many mission fields, the one who set out to effect change is himself changed, often with greater cataclysm than his congregation.

My aunt, who is a masterfully peaceable homeschooler of eight children, has a blog filled with succinct but valuable gems on this subject. For more reading, see Little Sanctuary.

O. bin Laden and the Sparrow

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:23:00 +0000

Dead upon the ground lies a vulture. The rain trickles down and a little sideways with a sorrowful patter. There are no men in suits, no human eulogy. There is a vague sound in the chilly thick air as of the shuffling of six folded wings. There is only one attendee. The lone mourner speaks a heartfelt benediction over the black lifeless feathers on the grass. A rough stone suggests the remembrance of a menhir. Forget-me-nots and buttercups wreath the animal with the bittersweet calico of grief and joy. It soared high as the highest in its time, despised and rejected among men.

In the South, at least, I drive past dead animals so often that it is easy to grow numb to the twinge in my stomach when I recall the loss of life. Any life. That is not to say I don't eat meat. I am as grateful for Chicken Tetrazzini or Shrimp Scampi as the next guy, true. But it is also gladdening to know that the Lord attends the funerals of sparrows - and vultures. Most of the time, He's the only one.

In the last five years, we have seen the deaths of two men of power, both of whom used that power to incite fear and violence and to oppress. Their actions were Evil. The strictest Atheist would have to at least nod his head in half-hearted assent.

And yet.

And yet, it's frightening to hear people cheering the death of anyone. To hear songs of exultation and cheers, to have Death in any form lauded, is or ought to be disturbing. Lewis talks at length about the extent of patriotism in The Four Loves, and I am not inclined to disagree with him. He doesn't mention this, but I think it fair to say he would see no harm in relief at the death of an enemy. Certainly, the lengthier the enmity, the greater the relief. But Proverbs comes to mind, and Obadiah. The text of Obadiah is mostly a malediction against Edom, the nation of Esau.

You should not look down on your brother in the day of his misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction, nor boast so much in the day of their trouble.
-Obadiah v.12

Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
    When he stumbles, do not let your heart
        rejoice,
or the Lord will see and disapprove
    and turn his wrath away from him.
                                                            -Proverbs 24:17

Greater men have tried and failed to unravel the Will of God with regard to the condemnation of God, so I do not pretend to understand that. But I cannot find it in my heart to sing patriotic hymns when an enemy falls. The Created of God is the Created of God, be he an enemy of the people or no. Thank God such a threat is abated, and thank the soldiers who put themselves in harm's way that we might be free. But know that God attends the funerals of even every sparrow.

Power Outage

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 02:42:00 +0000

Yesterday evening, a wrathful gale beat a path through Knoxville, tearing up ancient and enormous trees in old neighborhoods like mine. I am always at odds with myself when it comes to these things. Storms gives me pause for my family's safety and the inconvenience of replacing things like windows and shingles, but the near-unbridled power of all that wind and water, heralded by the tympanic cannon-blasts of thunder, always thrills my spirit. It is difficult to stem the desire to go and stand in the writhing tempest (foolish as that may be).

The storm had blown through quickly, dissembling to reveal the golden shimmer of evening sunlight glimmering off the last remnants of rain and cloud. Steam rose from the street for hours afterward. People wandered through the neighborhood, curiously assessing the damage. I walked through the lampless dark after nightfall, exhaling gratefully at the conspicuous number of near-misses - weighty turrets of oak falling across power lines, streets, mailboxes, but only a few houses. It could have been much worse.

Beneath the star-drawn sky, unhindered by the nervous hum of electric light, people had lit candles and lanterns. Houses on the wet night-blue street had no faceless flicker of TV casting the pallid light of a satellite trance from every window. Incandescent glows could be seen in bedrooms, living rooms, and on porches. Neighbors sat together in their driveways or walked about, checking on each other. Certainly we are all guilty of a degree of voyeurism, but there was also a peace. Like waking from a muddled dream and seeing the tangible world before you, people had little entertainment save the company of each other.

As I posted previously, I spent the next to the last week of Lent chasing the dream of shared music and stories through the Midwest with a visionary cadre of musicians. Bill Wolf, Taylor Brown, Emilee Cook, Terry and Helene Mahnken, Carl Smith, Chris Dorsten, and I blew through three states and five stops, enjoying the company of some wonderful people. The last two dates were in Knoxville, with the tour finishing at St. John's Cathedral downtown. Greg Adkins, who played along for the last two shows - not to mention on the record - and who is one of the most passionate artist advocates I know (being a gifted songster himself), put together a quick video from setup and soundcheck. Enjoy. Oh, and Jill Andrews sings. Like I said, Enjoy.

The Land that Claims Me

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 03:27:00 +0000

Tomorrow is departure day for my first tour. Of course, I ought to be in bed, but I feel the need to stay awake and procrastinate, like a mud-hungry boy on the eve of his first camping trip (with real fire). In the preparation though, unexpected beauty has hit me like a long-forgotten embrace.

I've been reading a lot of women lately: Kathleen Norris, Madeleine L'Engle, Anne Lamott. Add to that a handful of men whose writing is not particularly masculine. I don't say this is a bad thing. Nor do I say that I can pinpoint exactly what it is in writing that evokes masculinity or womanliness. I am beginning to sense that the world behind "...in His own Image...male and female created He them," is wider and more mysterious than we often credit. Chesterton said that it might take a person a hundred readings for his eyes to be opened to the meaning of what he was reading. Perhaps I am on my ninety-ninth.

I have long been infatuated with the idea of going to Scotland. That is to say, permanently. It represents to me both an adventure and a homecoming to the peaty soil that claims the bones of my ancestors. Its forlorn beauty and miles of windswept moor, its wise and mighty shoulders of metamorphic rock bound in grass and furze, its lonely bird-haunted coast, they all speak to the poet in me like a liturgy. Dig deep, wrestle in the wilderness, the Spirit is like a wind coming and going. I can't deny the restlessness in me that is always looking outward, always feeling my heart sigh with the sound of every airplane, pregnant with possibility. I have friends over the Atlantic, true, and I always long to see them and kiss their faces and laugh at their jokes, but I'm not even sure if it's them I'm truly after. There are many longings, woven into a humanly inseparable tapestry of desire to pack up my girls and head across the sea.

Then tonight, I stood out on the back porch pinning laundry on the lines. Laundry - there's that womanly sensibility coming out. Kathleen Norris calls it a meditative activity. I cannot do it quickly, it makes me slow down. In slowing, feeling the vernal cold on my skin, hearing the dog tags jingle in the dark yard and the Paul Simon train horn in the distance, I felt an unearthly and wonderful peace with this place. I don't know if it has begun to exert some claim over me, to subject me to itself. I have spinach, broccoli, thyme, and lavender in the chilly Spring ground, casting hopeful shadows of family meals to come. I mow the yard and watch the blackberries leaf into wily green scimitars of vine here at Sinclair's Eve, and it feels as though this place and the people near me have some say in my heart. The individual in me longs to refuse, longs to maintain that staunch loneliness that marks me as this thing or that thing.

I feel the start of it,
A knee-jerk Reaction
in the bowel of the Well
in the middle of the Island
I used to be.

I am inescapably part of this community. A product of it? I do not know. Yes? No? After some fashion, probably. It would be arrogant to say that I live anywhere and yet eschew the constant influence of my friends, my neighbors, my enemies, be these people or principalities or the Rivers that clap their Hands. I am starting to be at peace with the idea. And now, of course, I pack my bags to drift through the Midwest for a few days. Absence, and the heart.

Loving Blind

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 02:22:00 +0000

Many thanks to everyone who tuned in to 96.3 to hear us on Remedy After Dark on Thursday. Burt, Patricia, and I piled into the storied old studio whence J. Bazzel Mull broadcast southern gospel for more years than anyone likes to count. I loitered in the front office of the building, reading the plaques on the wall, and discovered that Reverend Mull had been blind from the age of 11 months. He is dead now, but this bit of trivia made me wish I could have a conversation with him. He spent most of his life as a radio tycoon of sorts and a music promoter. He had a long-standing relationship with The Chuck Wagon Gang - whom Greg Adkins and I played opposite to a humorously sparse crowd at the Tennessee Valley Fair. We can't think of it nowadays without laughing. I had only vaguely heard of The Chuck Wagon Gang before, but the name unfailingly brought to mind a bubbling vat of beans, and that's never dull.

Still I was amazed at the man's blindness, mostly because of his marriage. He had never seen his wife's face, looked into her eyes, yet their marriage was undoubtedly dedicated according to the tales. It reminded me of the Lover in the Song of Solomon. The Beloved sees his face, but we never do. She describes him, wonderfully and eloquently, but description of a face, no matter how good, always falls short of seeing the person with your own eyes. Yet we are commanded to fall in love with a groom whose face we've never seen. Like Elijah, we see the back of him everywhere if we're paying attention. Walking through the majesty of the world he created, smelling the piquant cleanliness and the cool rush before a summer rain, running our hands across the rustling crowns of broom sedge, feeling the sun and the snow, it's like seeing the back of someone you know in a crowd. You rush to catch up with him, but he keeps walking, almost as if he knew you were there. Doggedly you call out his name, and he waits at a corner until you get close before taking off again. He seems to want you to follow him. You still haven't seen his face. How does a blind man fall in love? Is it the best way? I don't know, but we're all hoping for it in some way or another.

In the chasing of that groom, Bill Wolf, a great, humble, and dedicated songwriter - who I'm privileged to call my friend - put together a song cycle called Easter Stories & Songs. A gaggle of folks that graciously includes myself is leaving town in a few days to drive under the wide skies of Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio to share the music. If you're in the area, come by, because you're an invaluable part of the conversation that is Us. The dates can be found to your right, dear reader. Also, they are on Bill's website. If you call Knoxville home, or at least the land where you wander, we'll be playing both West Towne Christian Church (April 20th) and St. John's Cathedral (April 22nd). This music is joyful, like silver out of the crucible, and I hope we get to spend the evening sharing it with you.

Cultivars of Grace

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 04:09:00 +0000

It is my vacation. The girls and I returned to visit my in-laws in a hiccup-sized town in the Florida panhandle scrub country. The scarlet waves of clover billow in the wind (I avoid the words "crimson tide"), and the jonquils give rise to the suggestion that Spring would soon dance out of the wings and onto center stage, moving even the brittle live oaks to a greening. Ah, the oaks - our alter egos according to Isaiah, and always the last to sprout leaves.

Going down for a visit is always a ritual of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am lovingly haunted by the stark, lonely beauty of those wide, forgotten flatlands. They are the face of Moses, of Elijah, of Christ walking out of the wilderness to speak to the people after a harrowing unmasking of the self before God. On the other hand, the town is awash with my wife's memories, cracked and rusted in the marches of time. There is always the mixed wine of tidings good and ill. Small town life seems to either drift away, leaving a nostalgic shadow in its wake, or it stays near and becomes ingrown. It is very good, but emotionally taxing.

Taking shelter from a midday rainshower, I ducked into the old potting shed on the property, a ramshackle affair being continuously given the nudges of resurrection by my father-in-law Richard. It being mid-March, Karen, my mother-in-law, was in the midst of coaxing audacity out of a few timid tomato plants and Brussels sprouts beneath grow lights. The rest of the shed was taken up with mud-stained gardening implements and dusty bric-a-brac. A small selection of gardening volumes and cookbooks lined a shelf, and the prehistoric hulk of a tiller squatted against a wall. Stacks of upside down flower pots filled in the gaps between spades and hoes and watering cans. It was all dead tools, or at least only potential energy. The only life present was the fuschia feathering of miniscule tomato leaves under womb-colored light, and I couldn't help but think of my upbringing in the church.

So many of us, in the States especially, were brought up surrounded by the riches of Scripture and the admonitions of humble and human saints. We were immersed in the silly but wonderful and purposeful vagaries of our respective traditions, enfolded in great clouds of witnesses, the channels and vessels of grace. Yet in the midst of it all, life seemed strangely absent, or at least hard to come by. Given all the books and tools, one would expect life to be overflowing, but it was merely a secret, waiting pregnant in a dark corner like a dormant seed. Somehow or other, God shook us loose into life, pruning and urging, feeding and covering before frosts. It is no wonder, then, that many of us don't easily recognize the Spirit in saints who sprouted like wild mustard on the fringes of some wasteland, their joyous golden sprays of blossoms unseemly and unhinged in their grace. They are the AA Christians, the profligates-turned-preachers, the outlandish stories of failed suicides becoming visions of Christ and the saints. They are the Twain to our Fenimore Cooper, God's wry grin over the ornate and ludicrous prose of our theology.

Surely they must often grow frustrated with us. They leap toward the light with all their strength, all their soul, all their might, often failing in spectacular fashion without the bourgeois skills of hiding it. We require gentle prodding and rich soil to grow, while they latch onto any near scent of the Gospel and explode with praise. My view of them is the poet's view, not the theologians. Of course it falls blithely short of an understanding of Christ's parable of the soils (the theologians' views fall short too, one might argue), but truly I sometimes long to be like one of these, wild and unbounded in love, passionate and expressive. My comfort is in the knowledge that the author of life is the author of both the wolf and the dachshund, the mustang and the cart pony. Both wild and tame shall be in his fold, but even on our best days, none among us approaches either the inward cultivated richness or the wild outbound leaping of the love of God.

Temple Sounds

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:01:00 +0000

There was a line outside. Men with goats, bulls, doves, bowls of flour and oil, all stood about waiting until the priest was ready to receive each of them. Some spoke to their neighbors, glad-hearted and expectant. Others were silent, watching from within themselves as if from a long way away. Added to this moderately patient crowd was the cackling racket of the animals. The helpless bleating of lambs and flapping of pigeons in makeshift cages played a reckless counterpoint over the disquieted lowing of great bulls, one scuffing its hooves anxiously, one searching through the grain sack of a waiting stranger with its great purple tongue. Goats grunted and whined and stared about with their almond eyes. All these, of course, contributed to an extensive carpet of defecation which every waiting man was keen to avoid, most of them with the mild attentiveness of one who is acclimated to such things. The Judean street bustled about them in the jovial ho-hum importance of its daily market affairs. Men and women carried bundles of firewood, homespun fabric still suggestive of the oily, metallic smell of sheep, precarious jars of water, bags of dry spelt, dates, grapes, stonily crusted loaves of bread waiting to be broken open to reveal the wonderful riches inside – all of it accompanied by the hocking sing-songs of those who would trade, their voices trying not to betray the desperation to sell.

Upon finally entering the gates, each man from the line was greeted by a terrific onslaught of his senses. Smoke and incense perfumed the air. The priests on duty looked positively monstrous, their ceremonial clothes saturated with blood spatter across the aprons, their sleeves acrid with smoke. The cacophony of wounded livestock echoed off the ornate walls, mingling with the tinkling of tiny bells from the priests’ once beautiful garments. The greatest sensation was the smell – blood, death, cooking, incense, offal, smoke, singed hides – all of it together in the expansive and elaborate temple court. One could never grow completely accustomed to it. In the heat of the day it was almost unbearable, and you never left forgetting it.

This is the place where sin is atoned for. The raucous din and unforgettable smell surrounded by lavish architectural adornment paint an unmistakable portrait of the intersection of holy mystery and the chaotic business of redemption. It was not, is not, sexy, and never shall it be. It is the necessary mess, the alluvial muck wherefrom springs the golden corn of wheat – life-giving only when it has fallen into the earth and died. Redemptive work saturates us in the leprous putrescence of sin, not as those who partake, but as the physician’s assistant – doing his fallible best – is covered in the smears and viscosity of the physician’s work. His life is lived in a rhythm: scrub up, dive in, scrub up dive in, scrub up, dive in, with all the human business of living and learning in between. With tending, and with time, what he finally sees emerge from beneath the caked bandages and dripping tubes is the wholeness of a human being.

House Show

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 04:45:00 +0000

Amid the trumpet blasts of daffodils, the spangling of crocuses, we gathered in the home of two dear friends. They were gracious enough to allow six unpredictable musicians (are there any other kinds?) houseroom to set up the fittingly weird marriage of electronics, strings, wood, and metal. We had rehearsed, but what we hoped for was not a perfect show. We hoped for a miracle, that blatantly real and unearthly thing that happens when Good gets out of control and we begin to hang on for dear sweet life.

The table was weighed down by the richest of fare. We ate and drank and stepped up to the microphones with fear and trembling. All the world is desperately important - life and death. But when the last note had rolled out like the trailing whisper of a thundercloud, we realized that we had been a part of something which was more than the sum of its parts. I am thankful. Much thanks, as well, to all those who came to Nate and Emily's house tonight. It's never the same without you.

Cast List:
Taylor Brown - drums, percussion, piano, hats
Burt Elmore - electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, banjo, bedlam
Robyn James - viola, vocals, stomping, clapping, grooves
Ethan Norman - acoustic, vocals, Saxony
Patricia Peacock - cello, stomping, clapping, fantasy creatures
aw - guitar, harmonica, accordion, piano, vocals, shenanigans
Nate & Emily Sharpe - house

Vegetables in the Calendar

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:10:00 +0000

I'd had it planned for four months. I was going to retreat to Gethsemani Abbey in rural central Kentucky for three days and two nights in January. In the dead of winter, I would be alone with God and my thoughts in a place where silence was the rule rather than the exception. I didn't have any sort of understanding of why I wanted to go. Andrew Peterson, an artist I know, had gone and seemed to get something out of the experience. Friends of mine had read Thomas Merton, the founder of the abbey, and they seemed to be on top of things and rather devil-may-care. Surely there was some connection.

In recent years, this kind of thinking has begun to be lifted like a veil from my eyes. Certainly, retreats and reading the meditations of saints is valuable, a worthy activity. But it is not the pure seed of the Gospel, and furthermore, it is not always what I presently need. This is a lesson I don't want to learn, of course, but I continue to be led to it - like eating my asparagus.

Then, my mother tore a bit of her knee and had to schedule surgery to fix it. Also, various microbes were circulating, pressing down a season of sickness on Knoxville and environs (and everywhere else, I assume). So, four days before I was supposed to leave for Kentucky, I found out my mother's surgery was scheduled for the morning of my departure. Then Kat and I discovered that some unnamed malady was being shared at the babysitter's house. All of this was pointing toward a kink in my calendar.

"Honey, whatever you decide, that will be okay with me," said my gracious wife. I knew, of course, that it would be impossible to send our daughter to the sitter's while Kat went to work. My dad couldn't take off work to keep her, and my mother was out of commission for some time. I began to fill my mind with a selfish inward monologue like a vat of burbling witch's brew. How ridiculously unfair! How could they schedule surgery at a time like this? Reading between the lines of my thoughts, this meant, I'm supposed to be going away to be HOLY. Where do they get off interrupting that? It's quite shameful to say this, really, but it's true.

So, two days before I was scheduled to leave, I called and left a message saying that I was very sorry, but I couldn't come. Some "family stuff" came up. I told their answering machine (monks apparently don't talk on the phone all that much) that I would love to come back at a later time, and I apologized for the eleventh hour cancellation. The phone call left a fist-sized pocket of abjection and disappointment in my stomach. I stewed a while over the guilt of being that selfish. Then I commenced with ploughing a first-class rut in which I could sit. Enter: the wife of Zebedee.

Sometimes Scriptures will follow me around for a while until I get the point, like "a little white dog," as Anne Lamott says. I reread and reheard the story of the mother of James and John a few times that weekend and later. Jesus begins a long walk to Jerusalem. The apostles sense the calm before the storm. Salome walks up to Jesus, taking him by the elbow, pulling him aside. She kneels before him.

"I have a request of you."
"What do you want?" he says, rather brusquely.
"Let my sons sit at your right and left in your kingdom."
"You don't know what you're asking."

He then turns to the young men and offers them the bitter wine of martyrdom. They drink the cup Jesus himself drank. Salome gets her wish, but like the story of the Monkey's Paw, it's nothing like what she imagined. It was my desire to know why I would be going to Gethsemani. As the time approached, I grew apprehensive, trying to remember the many things I had read about solitude, silence, meditation. Then, it was all taken away, and instead, I was given a weekend of spending time with my only daughter. The lesson? It certainly begins with, "You don't know what you're asking." What you say you want is lightyears away from what you need. The lesson is still being learned, but it's good.

Even asparagus can be alright sometimes - sauteed and wrapped in prosciutto.

Another Tune

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 06:46:00 +0000

The recording of demos continues. Cheers!

They Painted Over Locks by Adam Whipple

The Beginning and the End

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:59:00 +0000

Traditionally, we've put Sunday at the beginning of the week to commemorate the rising of our Savior. The Gospel says "on the first day of the week," the women went to put spices at Jesus' tomb and were astounded to find the stone rolled away. There are sons of God, robed in the light of the Lord, seated on the giant boulder. I always like to imagine their feet kicking in the air like kids on too-tall McDonald's seats. Mary, eyes blurred with tears, recognizes Jesus when he says her name. All this happens on a Sunday - the first day of the week. So we remember.

But God rested from his work on the seventh, the last day. The last day was the one set aside to recollect, to meditate, to breathe deeply. So, the Jews rested on the last day of the week. This causes minute rifts in the Body of believers. Some say this, some argue that. Some recall the pagan namesakes of the days - Saturn and the Sun. That's neither here nor there. I have grown up going to church at the beginning of the week (Sunday, according to every calendar I've ever seen, save one). I've gone to church on Saturday nights as well, relishing the late, sun-strewn mornings and big lazy breakfasts with my girls on Sunday.

This also is neither here nor there.

However, I do enjoy the idea of viewing that big family gathering as the end of the week. Usually, seeing it as the beginning, I associate it with unwieldy metaphors of putting gas in my spiritual car tank, preparing me for the long weekly slog through mires not peopled with the sons of God. Then I come to Friday and need either a pick-me-up or a cigarette, though I don't smoke. Maybe there's credence for this idea: the great sending-off, the broken champagne bottle and the bon voyage. Even so, the idea of that messy, raucous, delightful family meeting as the end of the week, the final gathering at the Grey Havens, holds great appeal for me. I strive through the week, looking forward with anticipation to when I will be amongst a host of Kingdom people, all surrounded by a cloud of witnesses like brilliant heat waves in the drab February air. Finally, I am amongst others who do not belong, who come from a country into which we shall one day set our feet, seeing on the horizon a city with high, open gates. Ah, the end of the week. Welcome to the feast.

It is preparation for the last and greatest Feast, the one that is ever-renewed, ever-lived. This too, is a sending-off.

The Wonderful Company of Failure

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 03:57:00 +0000

There are certain books that keep resurfacing from my shelf as short reading. Initially, each was a small project like any book, a quaint or wrenching or hilarious journey through other worlds. After a time though, they became my favorite reruns. If I was depressed or bored or inclined to procrastinate, I took them ought as if calling an old friend. This is not intended as a slight on the authors – I am fairly certain that, in some respect, they at least appreciate the $19.99 spent, regardless of my emotional proclivities at the time.

It was perhaps a year and a half ago when my friend Nathan passed to me a copy of Paul Collins’ Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books. Any moderately sane person reading it will feel disheartened by its nostalgic fugue of failed efforts. I read an article on Barbara Follett in Lapham’s Quarterly yesterday that further demonstrated Collins’ seeming fondness for lauding the obscure failures of Western literature. He captures a delicately heartbreaking expression of the fact that everything and everyone will eventually die, like the realization I came to this year: I cannot read all the books. Sixpence House runs the danger of being perpetually morose, but I can’t help going back to it. I find myself happy in the company of people who have both failed and succeeded, not excepting people who see their forgotten successes as failures. I think I enjoy this weird museum display of disappointment for the same reason that the confessions of others bring me the healing freedom to confess: I am not alone.

Until we are blatantly rebuked, we labor beneath the delusion that each of us is alone with our mistakes and losses. It’s nearly impossible to shut out that childishly braying voice in my head that nonchalantly dismisses the faults of others as trivia. That’s all well and good for him. I only wish I had his set of light-hearted problems. Instead, I’m an utter [insert reprobation]. It’s a lie only denuded by the unnatural grace of confession. I find hope in the stories of others’ foul balls and strikes because I see that they’ve continued plodding. Knowing my record to be mostly composed of foul balls and strikes, it is a strange and wonderful comfort to believe that, if I keep walking, something fantastic might surprise me. Also helpful is the staggering irony of a published book containing lengthy autobiographical passages on the failure to be published. Thank you, Paul. We who write are emboldened.

New Tune

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 02:19:00 +0000

The unassuming fellow before you is none other than the illustriously talented Ethan Norman. He and I spent the better part of about two years playing shows together and co-writing the occasional song. Ever since I opened a parcel this Christmas to discover the blessing of a recording program - once again, Thanks, Dad! - I've been trying to stay busy converting all the music in my head to a format other than synaptic structure. It's a lot easier to figure out how a song will sound when you can hear all the horrors of bad lap steel playing (care of yours truly) instead of trying to imagine them. This is a wonderful tune Ethan and I wrote (mostly Ethan, actually) about a French lady we've seen on television. I'll let you figure that one out. Enjoy.

Apple From This Tree by Adam Whipple

New Photos

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 23:04:00 +0000

I've had a few rolls of film sitting by the front door for ages, waiting for me to bring them to fruition. Finally, I took them to the lab, and here are a few of the jewels that emerged. The rest can be found at my Flickr site. I always get a giddy sense of anticipation sending photos to the lab. "Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days, you will find it again." Shooting photographs, playing with light, is a treasure hunt in the dark - with film, at least. Perhaps that's part of the draw to film for me. I desire hard-earned satisfaction, full of characteristic minuscule imperfections that I can never quite erase.

The Geeky Neighbor Who Loved Me

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:39:00 +0000

Years ago, when I rode in my dad's truck listening to Rich Mullins, Sandi Patty, and early Michael W. Smith - who, like Dick Clark and Paula Dean, doesn't age - the radio dial would lean constantly toward 89.1 FM. My dad would drive down curvy East Tennessee roads with his elbow out the window, quietly singing harmony to familiar tunes tinnily buzzing out of the speakers of a white Dodge pickup. I myself learned to sing harmony to that stuff, my fake, peer-induced attempts at liking Nirvana notwithstanding. The station went through changes over the years, changing their target demographic from the middle-aged single to the Starbucks-fueled soccer mom, but resolutely keeping ties with all digital content that came pouring out of Nashville's recording studios. Eventually, of course, they realized that Soccer Mom's Soccer Kids like music too, and they began the occasional tangent into DC Talk and other offerings of Forefront Records.

This was my musical tour through middle school, my aural window to a world larger than Halls Crossroads.

Then came our falling out. 89.1, Love89, plowed onward with its target listener pleased as punch, and I heard "Vitalogy," "The Wall," "Zoso," and other gems from my aunt's collection. I spent my high school years with a foot in each world, loving bands like Jars of Clay and Caedmon's Call who made decidedly engaging art. Then, after years of impolite snickers on my part, the geeky neighbor, who I'd long written off, extended his hand across the fence to me.

I was a singer/songwriter with vague dreams of playing great songs for attentive crowds. I shunned anything kept ties with all of that trite and pigeonholing nonsense. My first record was made up of a bunch of one-takes sitting in front of a microphone at my parents' church. I'd been listening to the Counting Crows and anything I could find that was acoustic and depressing - ergo, the sound of said record, but Love89 accepted it. A guy called Kris Love had started a new program called the Detour, playing local folks, many of them friends of mine. He played embarrassingly terrible cuts from my record and found speeches full of kind words to say about them. Then I made another record, better and with only one or two embarrassments, and Kris played that one as well. Not being a soccer mom, I still thought the main format of the radio station was a trifle geeky, but I had to admit that anyone who would play my record (and say it was not only good, but worthwhile) had my attention.

My geeky neighbor (If Love89 could speak, would they call me, "My pretentiously esoteric neighbor who fancies himself a pillar of the intelligentsia?") and I had since waved to each other over the fence more often. I've even whispered quiet words of admiration over the station. Yet today, I awake to find that it shall all pass away soon.

Love89 has been sold, the DJs will lose their jobs, and the format will be replaced by a syndicated Christian radio source out of Los Angeles or someplace. I watched a news report summing up the story, and a woman lamented that the local flavor would be gone, but "at least there will still be Christian radio." This caused an amount of ranting on the part of me, the pretentiously esoteric pillar of the intelligentsia, until my graceful wife told me to put down the telephone and the flame-thrower and rethink my principles. I shall miss my neighbor, who championed my music and the music of my friends, passing it along with words of encouragement and praise to people who otherwise would never have paid attention. It is my hope that someone or something else will arise to do the work that was done by the DJs and programmers of that station. Keep the old radio warm and close; good music needs a home.

Listen up.

Behold the Lamb of God

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:33:00 +0000

Most people have something which they define as "My Christmas," sounding vaguely like some kind of cute, frothy computer application (My Pictures, My Hard Drive, My Collection of Nosehairs, etc.). A decade ago, I stood in New City Cafe at 116 South Central and gave Andrew Peterson a geeky grin as he handed me a copy of his new record "Behold the Lamb of God." Since that time, it has been the cohering variation of my Christmas, leading me annually back to that theme from which all variations spring, Christ himself. This year, I've had the honor to participate in a hometown production of the song cycle, in a grand telling of the Story. For the past several months, I met with Greg Adkins and Bill Wolf, a couple of local Creative Arts pastors that I'm delighted to call my friends, to plan rehearsals, draft willing participants, and stand on a pair of stages in a whirlwind of a musical narrative of the Advent of Christ. I hesitate to call it a show, a performance, or even something that we did, even though there was an undeniable element of labor. It is more something for which we strove, and which we found, to our joyous surprise, had surrounded us all along. It was more than the sum of its parts.

Here is a taste of our Sunday morning, an offered handful of vignettes. Enjoy.

(from Greg Adkins' blog...)
Here is the complete list of musicians and singers in alphabetical order:

Adam Adkins - shakers, tamborines, congas, djembe, percussion
Greg Adkins - piano, organ, acoustic guitar, hammered dulcimer, vocals
Kevin Bower - vocals
Chad Covert - drums
Craig Covert - vocals
Burt Elmore - electric guitars, mandolin
Angela Hemrick - vocals
Robyn James - viola
Sarah McAffry - vocals
Grayson Mynatt - violin
Matthew Nelson - electric bass, upright bass
Patricia Peacock - cello
Nathan Sharpe - acoustic guitar, vocals, washboard
Andy Vandergriff - vocals
Mandy Watson - vocals
Adam Whipple - acoustic guitar, piano, organ, penny whistle, lap steel, accordion, vocals
Bill Wolf - acoustic guitar, banjo, accordion, vocals

(from me...)
Also, Kenny Woodhull and Mark Nelson emceed respective Sunday mornings for us. It is truly beyond words to describe what an honor this was. Thanks to Greg and Bill for making this happen in community and for having vision. Thanks to everyone who sang, strummed, stomped, drummed, bowed, hummed, and walloped. And certainly, thanks to everyone who listened and participated in the Telling of the Story with us. Merry Christmas unto you. The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.

The Burgers of Thankfulness

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 04:27:00 +0000

My wife and I rode with my parents and my brother for Thanksgiving vacation, because one of our cars was cooked and we didn’t have the money to pay for gas to Atlanta. This meant four hours crammed in a minivan with a fortnight’s supply of cheesy snack crackers, fuzzy heirloom blankets, and songs with too many electronic piano overdubs. My daughter, who is one year old, slept most of the way and looked out the window for the rest. This is a blessing I am determined not to overlook. After a barbeque extravaganza in a house with twenty-three of my amazing and wonderful relatives, in which I imagined my aorta raging like a French lobbyist, we began the pilgrimage home. I was certain that I could implement my strict regimen of penitential celery consumption as soon as we got in the car, but no. It was not to be.

We pulled into the local suburban Mecca beneath the smiling glow of neon signs which cast lard-colored halos around our heads. They offered all the best cures to our dwindling waistlines: Vietnamese bistros, Irish pubs, Mexican haute cuisine, coffee shops, ice cream shops, coffee-flavored ice cream shops. Most places had appetizers which consisted of butter deep-fried in canola oil. To cure our ills, we pulled into a famous high-end burger chain and tumbled in the front door to a Crisco-pasted American dream in simulcast.

Behind the hostesses, whose Aphroditic figures revealed that they had never consumed a smidgen of the restaurant’s hearty offerings, stood an eight-foot-tall plastic Statue of Liberty holding a neon-haloed burger where the torch should have been.

Give me your wired, engorged, befuddled masses yearning to eat the slaughtered cattle of your teeming shore, she proclaimed.

To add to the American trance which salted every onion ring, there were televisions amok. Mostly on the same flashy sound-bite news channel, they encircled the unsuspecting patrons like white collar drug pushers. There was even a television recessed into the floor so as not to take up space while we waited for our table. I recall seeing some children squatting around it like little Neanderthals, soaking up the warm commercials. As we ate, the televisions, in antiphonal unison, heralded the obligatory Thanksgiving tale of people being mangled in the annual midnight shopping rush and camping out for weeks in front of an electronics store, living off dried noodles and a solar-powered cell phone connection.

However, this evening, my church gathered in celebration of being the Beloved of Christ. Folks brought dishes baked with love and we spent time taking communion and sharing in the beauty of what the Lord has been doing in our city and our lives. This body of believers has been around for half a decade or so, and by the grace of the Lamb, she has already endured trials that have – at least in the well-publicized world – brought schism and bitterness to churches long established. I must stress, especially to myself, that it’s not our doing, that it’s certainly not mine. If there is any part for us to play in this, it is honesty. That’s the embarrassing element that has helped the most on our part: that awkward admittance of brokenness. It’s only in the wake of honesty that Thanksgiving can take place. All my blessings are mine, my own, my precious – until I admit that I earned nothing but scorn and shame. But the scorn and shame have been taken away.

Happy Thanksgiving. Don’t watch too much TV.

Happy Birthday

adamwhipple@hotmail.com (Adam Whipple) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 04:56:00 +0000

In lieu of having an entire new record, I've joined SoundCloud, allowing me to put new tracks on here for your listening pleasure. Hopefully, I'll find my Radioshack folder with all those crazy demos and live recordings, and I'll have a treasure trove to offer here. This was a present I made for my wife's birthday. Merci beaucoup to my father for putting it together. Enjoy!

Nighttime by Adam Whipple