Driving over to Chattanooga this afternoon for the weekend, the weather was perfect - sunny and clear, 75 degrees, and a nice breeze. Before I left my house, I grabbed a stack of CDs for the trip. Every once in a while I hear a track that is so damn good I can’t help but listen to it over and over, usually best experienced with the windows down and the car stereo cranked all the way up. Today, that included Joe Cocker singing Just to Keep from Drowning and One Night of Sin, Michael McDonald’s cover of For Once in My Life from his new album, Jars of Clay’s Work and Dead Man (Carry Me), Jesus He Knows Me and I Can’t Dance from Genesis, and a couple tracks from The Midtown Project, the soon to be released CD from my church, Kingdom Days and My Only Rock (which has a killer B3 organ solo I could listen to all day).

What about you? When you have a chance to crank up your favorite tunes in your car on a beautiful day, what do you turn on first?

Don’t let go / don’t let go / we can crawl / out of the shadows /
don’t let go /don’t let go / we can find our way / back home //

At Matthew Perryman Jones’ concert last Thursday evening, he played several songs from his upcoming CD, Swallow the Sea, including this one, Out of the Shadows, that I heard him play a couple weeks ago for the first time. The mixing of the new album, with Neilson Hubbard returning as producer, was finished last Friday, and it was sent out for mastering the beginning of the week. It is supposed to release sometime in early August, so keep an eye on Matthew’s MySpace page for more details as well as song samples and video footage from the studio.

About this time last year, at a benefit show put together by a friend of mine, Matthew was one of four musical acts. He had a great band with him that night, including Andy Osenga on guitars and Will Sayles on drums. But he started his set by walking out to the microphone in the middle of the stage by himself, plugging in his black electric guitar, and singing the old spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child while strumming a simple accompaniment pattern. To this day, that remains my favorite vocal I’ve ever heard from him. With the longing of a weary traveler, with pain and loneliness and hope all mixed together, Matthew sang, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / sometimes I feel like a motherless child / sometimes I feel like a motherless child / a long way from home // Why do I wander, why do I run, why do I wander, why do I run / why do I wander so far from home // Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / a long way from home,” ending in a crescendo of emotion. At his show Thursday, he played the version that has ended up on the album, what he said is his favorite track. It starts the same way as he did it a year ago, except strumming on an acoustic guitar instead of an electric, and by the second verse the band kicks in and builds and builds and builds, until by the end it is a wall of sound, enveloping you and echoing its message in your soul. (here’s a link to a video of another performance of it.)

I’ll post more details about the album as I hear them from Matthew.

Saturday night, after hearing Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken play through their new EP, Ampersand, in an early concert, as well as a solo set from both of them, I headed over to F. Scott’s for a nightcap to catch what I could of Pat Coil’s set with his band. While savoring a bowl of chocolate espresso pot de crème with a glass of red wine, letting the jazz wash over me, I scribbled down these thoughts:

We are strongest when we admit our need for each other. When we stop trying to pretend we have it all together, when we aren’t afraid to show our loose ends and frayed edges, in that moment we are closest to becoming the person we want to be. We try to protect ourselves by projecting a false image of who we are, fearful that if those around us see us as we really are, they won’t like us and we will end up even lonelier than we are now. Never realizing that by doing so we only ensure that we will remain isolated, alone and unknown, which, if we are honest, is our greatest fear. Only when we decide that it is worth the risk, when we decide to “make ourselves known to each other,” as Wendell Berry writes, will we truly find what we’ve desperately been longing for.

Arriving at church yesterday morning, the first thing I noticed was that the kneelers we use for communion weren’t in place at the front of the building, as they usually are for the first Sunday of each month. Then I noticed there were just two tables, one on each side of the stage, holding the bread and wine. When it came time to take communion, Randy, our pastor, explained the change. Because we are the body of Christ, because we have been redeemed and made new, both individually and corporately, as a way of reminding ourselves of that, we were going to serve communion to each other. Over the forty-five minutes it took, in groups of about twenty or thirty, we gathered around the tables, took the bread and wine, and gave it to our neighbor, reminding each other that “this is the body of Christ, broken for you,” and “this is His blood, shed for you.”

When Randy started telling us about what was going to happen, my first thought was, “I don’t want to do that. It will be awkward!” My second thought was to pause and remember a story Scott Cairns told at the Festival of Faith and Writing, of the Baptist minister who interrupted a conversation between he and Father Iákovos to ask the monk if he “had Jesus Christ as his Personal Savior.” I love Father Iákovos’ reply, “No, I like to share him with others,” because for a moment it takes me out of the me-centered culture I’m immersed in, reminds me that I am a part of something bigger, just one member of the Body of Christ. I remembered Kathleen Norris’ story at the festival about the value of communal prayer, of how “when you can’t say the Lord’s Prayer or pray the Psalms, there are others who can carry you along.” And I was thankful for those standing around me, for the friend on my left and someone I hadn’t met before on my right, all of us reminding each other through our words and our presence that we have a new way, a better way, to live. That we are not alone. That we have the responsibility, the privilege, of being the hands and feet of Christ for those around us, and them for us.

Today marks the Ascension, the 40th day after the resurrection of Christ. N.T. Wright, in his new book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, reminds us that “to embrace the Ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.”

(HT: RZIM)

There were two sessions on Wendell Berry during the festival, Wendell Berry and the Life of the Church and Wendell Berry and the Life of the Academy. They were both moderated by Jason Peters, editor of the recently published Wendell Berry - Life and Work, a collection of essays about Berry’s work by a wide variety of writers. At the one I was able to attend, three guys, Jack Leax, David Crowe, and Darryl Hart, read papers they had written about Berry’s work and how it relates to the life of the church, all peppered with quotes from his different books and essays.

Jack Leax started things off, and a couple minutes into his paper read this quote: “To remember the past is not to remember how it was, but how it is.” And, “‘To hope’ is not ‘to expect’. ‘To expect’ is probably to get disappointment.” He mentioned that Berry frequently describes himself as a “bewildered reader of the Bible.”

David Crowe went next, describing his experience of introducing Berry to a church book club that he leads. The title of his paper was Annoying Faithful Readers. He said, “In my book group, they are always charmed by Berry’s fiction and upset and bewildered by his non-fiction.” “I think people like Berry’s fiction because they can ignore the practical implications they can’t get away from in his non-fiction.”

Explaining why he goes to the trouble of hosting a book club, David said, “We read to enter new worlds and be confronted by new ideas, perhaps even to have our lives changed.”

Darryl Hart, reading the last paper of the session, Berry’s argument for conservative religion, said, “Berry’s criticism of the institutionalized church cannot be missed.” He talked about how Eugene Peterson, author of The Message translation and many other books, says that when reading Berry’s essays, every time Berry writes “farm”, he substitutes “parish”, and it works every time. Darryl address what he thinks are the strengths and weaknesses of that particular reading of Berry, and went on to address other ways he sees Berry arguing for conservative religion.

Another thing I have written in my notes, and I can’t remember if Darryl Hart said it or if he was quoting Berry, is, “We get religion not in bulk but little by little.”

The last fifteen minutes of the session were reserved for a Q&A. After a question coming up as to whether it would be a good idea to start a church book club using one of Berry’s books (the answer an immediate and resounding ‘no’), one person asked what books they would recommend people start with, if they had never read Berry. A Place on Earth and A World Lost were both recommended. My favorite prose that I read last year, period, came from Berry’s book Remembering, so I was surprised to hear Jason Peters say, “I think Remembering may be his most difficult.” Remembering contains the best description I’ve ever read of first attraction, of the beginnings of a relationship - I think I memorized a page and a half of that chapter - so I do recommend it. You can buy it in a collection, along with Nathan Coulter and A World Lost, here.

Reading Berry, you constantly stumble across little gems like this one: “To trust is simply to give oneself; the giving is for the future, for which there is no evidence. And once given, the self cannot be taken back, whatever the evidence.”

Since today is the National Day of Prayer, as I’ve done before, I thought I’d post my favorite short story from Mark Twain, The War Prayer. I found an illustrated copy of this a couple weeks ago in a used bookstore here in Nashville, and just came across an animated version here. I think the last line is brilliant.

The War Prayer by Mark Twain
written approximately 1904-05

Editorial Note: Outraged by American military intervention in the Philippines, Mark Twain wrote this and sent it to Harper’s Bazaar. This women’s magazine rejected it for being too radical, and it wasn’t published until after Mark Twain’s death, when World War I made it even more timely. It appeared in Harper’s Monthly, November 1916.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. the whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Friday evening, I heard Rob Bell speak for the first of three times that weekend. Fresh off his trip to Seattle where he had spent a couple of days with my uncle and on panels with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he talked a couple of times about the thrill of sharing the stage with them.

He opened his talk by wondering about how strange it is to talk about writing, and read the quote (often attributed to Thelonious Monk), “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”

He explained the process of how he wrote his first book, Velvet Elvis (with his Velvet Elvis painting, which inspired the book’s title, leaning against his chair). First, he tried giving a friend, an established author, his material to turn into a book, but when he read it, it just sounded to him like his friend had stolen his work. So then he tried dictating it to a court stenographer, which didn’t work, and a couple other methods, before, “I came to the awful realization that I was going to actually have to write this book.” He quoted Gene Fowler, “Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.” But we write because we have no other choice, “we do the work because there is something inside of us that we have to get out or we will spontaneously combust.”

One of the things that Rob is most often criticized for is who he quotes. So, following that train of thought, I now have even more reason to like him. In the middle of his talk, he quoted a paragraph from the latest book by my favorite author, Frederick Buechner’s Secrets in the Dark. When he said Buechner’s name, I cheered, and he asked, “Are there other Buechner fans here?” A lot of hands went up, and he said, “Man, I am with my people.”

He said, when you write, “you have an edit button. Turn it off.” He explained his process, saying he will frequently write something two or three different ways, trying to find the best way to say it, and then pick the best one later when he is in the editing process.

He talked about the “tension of the new”, saying “tension is your friend.” And sometimes, to follow through, to get your work out, you have to have “intestinal fortitude.” And, “Don’t type as if people are going to read what you’re writing.”

Rob was using powerpoint during his talk, and at one point, he said, “Some of you are worried about letting other people see what you have written because they might think you’re strange.” As he finished that sentence, with perfect timing (which he later reveled in), he advanced to the next slide, which said simply, “Maybe you are.”

The first evening session on Friday was with Yann Martel, author of the bestseller Life of Pi. After reading a friend’s review of it back in October, I’ve been meaning to pick it up, but haven’t had a chance to yet. Hearing Yann talk about why and how he wrote it made me want to read it first chance I get.

The first thing I have written in my notes, and I can’t remember if this is how Yann started his talk or if it was from the person introducing him, is “We gather tonight to look at God’s creation and remember our place in it.”

Yann began by talking about his love for books, for reading, and said “I clearly remember the first time I cried over a character in a book, when I was ten years old.” He said he went into the bathroom so no one else would see him crying, since he didn’t know why he was. And, “One of the great things about art is that it gives you more lives. Every time you read a novel, you live another life.”

On writing, he said, “As far as I can tell, we start writing because something is not right in our lives.” But there is a danger there, that we can rely on our writing to give us our confidence and self-assurance, our self-worth. “You have to have people in your life who love you unconditionally, even if you write really bad short stories and novels.”

The impetus for writing The Life of Pi came when he thought “what if I wrote a novel where the central character had faith?” Living in India at the time, seeing what life was like ‘on the ground’ and the religious practices of those around him, he said “Since I was not going to a church or temple or synagogue to find reasons to hate being there, a whole new world was opened to me. The person who is religious is someone who is committed to searching out the mysteries of life.” And so, he made Pi, the titular character, a practitioner of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam.

The book opens by declaring that the story of Pi “will make you believe in God.” Expanding on that, Yann Martel in one sentence summed up what I felt was one of the dominant themes of the festival, probing into why we have and need art. “God is not in the story in the Pacific. God is the reason there are stories.”

Shaun is in the Dominican Republic this week with Compassion International, filming the stories of children and familes that have been rescued by Compassion. His pictures and stories bring back memories of the time I’ve spent in the Dominican.

Back in the summer of 2001, I went to the Dominican for a week to help build a church. That week ignited an interest in learning Spanish and living in another culture, so about six weeks later, I moved to San Miguel del Monte, ninety minutes outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to study at a Bible Institute. I lived there for about fifteen months, taking Bible classes and traveling around Argentina running sound and lights for a couple of their different drama groups. After moving back to the states at the end of 2003, I found out my friends that I had gone to the Dominican with were moving there to start a church. So, I took time off from the T.V. station I was working for and spent five weeks that summer in San Pedro de Macorís helping with all the details that are involved in starting a church, like designing and printing a songbook/hymnal, painting the building they rented to use as their facilities, spreading the word about the new church, leading and translating for home Bible studies, and whatever else needed to be done.

All that to say that I am looking forward to hearing and seeing the stories that Shaun will come back telling, stories of the glimpses he gets of what happens when the “curtain becomes translucent”, as N.T. Wright said Tuesday, times when “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” is more than just a nice sentiment.

So what can we do? Compassion is doing a push now to raise money to fight malaria. $10 buys one mosquito bed net, $50 buys five. You can give on their website. Why not?

After posting the Kathleen Norris quote yesterday, “I think sometimes that sacred space is found in an encounter with another person,” I went over to Seth’s blog, Five Cent Stand, and noticed this:

I think if maybe ever’ once in a while we could try to know our neighbor, then maybe we wouldn’t be so worried about predestination or whatever. I think if I can spend about 3 minutes not thinking about myself and ponder the wonders of that tree covered in white flowers, just swaying in the wind like its waving at the sky, I’ll probably get the best theology lesson I’ve had in weeks, maybe years.

After all, Jesus didn’t say, “Consider the Trinity…” or “Consider free will,” or “Consider dispensationalism.”

Nope, He said. “Just sit still for a minute. Stop worrying. Consider those Lilies over there.”

Maybe the best theology lessons are sometimes found in loving our neighbor and looking at lilies.

Thanks for the reminder, Seth.