This one is going to be a little scary. Are you ready?
Since this week's reading was all about the ways our community can support and challenge us as creators, and about the ways creating together can build community...
Write something. Anything.
Something from one of the last few prompts, maybe. Something you started years ago and have been poking at here and there ever since. Something you just woke up thinking of last week and have spent all your time working on since. Even something you aren't super sure about yet.
Then share it with someone you trust to encourage you.
Ask them what they're working on.
Next week we'll finish this book together! And next week Andrew and Co. wrap up their 20th anniversary tour. Are they coming near you?
Welcome, fellow travelers, to our eight-week discussion on Andrew's new nonfiction book, Adorning the Dark. This week we're reading the Prologue and Chapters 1-3. Click here for the full book club reading schedule and details.
I think of the last twenty-five or so years of writing and figure I should have something to say. Something, surely. ...
I carry a persistent fear that my thoughts are incorrect, or silly, or so obvious they aren’t worth saying. Suddenly I’m a little boy, sitting in class like a solemn ghost. Mrs. Larson asks me a question, all the seven-year-old eyes in the room turn to me with expectation, and I’m frozen in place, terrified by the sudden realization that I’m expected to contribute. My cheeks flush and I want to go away to someplace safe—someplace like the woods or the eternal fields of green Illinois corn where I can watch and experience and listen without any demand to justify my existence. I’ve always been happy to be alone. God, however, never takes his eyes off me, and on my good days I believe that he is smiling, never demanding an answer other than the fact of myself. I exist as his redeemed creation, and that is, pleasantly, enough for him.
The rest of the world, though, is chugging along just fine whether I speak up or not. I’m the kid (and the man) who doesn’t raise his hand. Whenever I do, I regret it. Better to keep quiet, to work out my rejection with fear and trembling, and to keep hunting for a safe place where I’m never confronted with my own insignificance. And yet, at war with that desire to be invisible is a yearning to be seen and known and valued. That’s what really led to writing, if I’m honest. In the beginning it wasn’t about glorifying my Maker—it was about declaring my own existence, for my own sake. It took a long time to realize that was a dead end. Literally. This book is about a better way, and even now I have to fight to follow it.
Being a writer doesn’t just mean writing. It means finishing. I’ve heard it said that a song is never finished, only abandoned. That’s not true for me. To the contrary, I can’t wait to be done with the thing, because only once it’s finished can I raise my hand at the back of the class and say something that will be considered, not ignored, something that might be a blessing to someone. Only then do I begin to take on some flesh and stop haunting the room. Walt Wangerin Jr. said once that art isn’t art until it’s experienced by another.
Praise God, I was reckless enough to try this thing—not because my songs matter all that much, but because I would have possibly gone mad—a madness of self-hatred, self-disdain, self-flagellation. A madness of Self. “Take thy thoughts captive,” I imagine God saying. “Put them to music. Then aim them away from you. Love your neighbor as yourself.” I confess, a mighty fear of irrelevance drove me to this vocation, a pressing anxiety that unless you looked back at me with a smile and a nod and said, “Oh, I see you. You exist. You are real to me and to this world and we’re glad you showed up,” I might just wither away and die. That’s not exactly a noble reason to fling your creations into the world, but it’s a decent place to start. After that, the Lord can redeem your impulse for self-preservation by easing you toward love, which is never about self. But if you’re scared, there’s no rush. First you have to do something. You have to climb out from under the bushel and share your light with those around you. You have to believe that you’re precious to the King of Creation, and not just a waste of space.
You and I are anything but irrelevant. Don’t let the Enemy tell you any different. We holy fools all bear God’s image. We’re walking temples of the Spirit, the bashful bride of Christ, living stones in what is going to be a grand house, as holy and precious as anything else in the universe, if not more so. God is making us into a Kingdom, a lovely, peaceful one, lit by his love for us flowing toward one another. That’s the best gift you have to give.
—From chapter 3, "Scared and Sacred"
Discussion: What stood out to you in this week's reading? What of Andrew's experiences sounded familiar? What's different?
Dear readers, I am glad that this is not The End.I've picked a very short snippet for our last excerpt of the book club. It burned in my heart.
Janner lay awake for a long time. He thought about the Fane of Fire, just on the other side of the ancient door, where the world was made of light. He wished they could open that door and let the light out.
Discussion: I'm so glad to know more of you now than I did at the beginning of the year. Thanks for joining in on our forum discussions! I'm looking forward to knowing you better as we keep hanging out.Thoughts about the end of the series? Come talk with us here or here.BTLOG: If you would like to see the livestream from the Ryman show this year, there are tickets available. You'll be able to watch the recorded video through the end of January.
Anniera, fabled and graceful. Even growing up a short sail away it always felt like a place out of fairytale.
Nia’s whisper woke him. “We’re almost there.”Janner sat up and yawned as Leeli handed him a hunk of sweetbread and a handful of shadberries. The sun stared at them from low in the west, glowing orange in a field of purple and blue. Kalmar sat at the bow, resting his chin on the rail. Beyond him, Janner watched Anniera rise from the sea.Waves spewed up from the feet of the cliffs on either side of a little bay—the same one from which they had embarked the day before. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but there seemed to be less smoke, less desolation than there had been the day before. The land visible between the cliffs was still blackened, and smoke still rose in tendrils, but he was at least able to see the graceful shape of the island. It was easy to imagine how beautiful it would be if it were green and lush.There was no shiver in his bones, no tingle in his spine as the ship floated into the bay’s still waters where the River Rysen met the sea. He didn’t feel the thrill he had always imagined when the boat thumped into the dock and he and his family set foot on the Shining Isle at last, without Gnag or his minions to defy them.And yet, he wasn’t disappointed. Janner wasn’t interested in the feeling of being home as much as the actuality of it. He wanted to help his family build a life here. He wanted to roam the island unafraid, to see the seasons turn from year to year. Oh, how he wanted to be still. No more running, no more terror, no more anxiety or troubled dreams. Just this one place in all the world into which the word “home” would fit unlike anywhere else.
Discussion: Is there a place in your world which feels like everything-right-ness to you? The home you lived in when you were small, your grandparents' house, a place your family talked about moving to often enough that you feel you've already been there? What is it about that place that feels so right?What did you feel or think during the chapter about the Maker? (Discuss here.)What would you want if you were a Fang?What was your favorite passage this week?
Readers, I cried through these chapters. No surprise there. I don't want to post anything too spoilery here on the main page, but I don't want to shy away from the real heart of this part of the story, either. Come talk more in the forum if you want to process together.The battle is over. The story is not.
When Janner turned away from Nia’s anguished face, the tragedy of war settled on his heart. Everywhere he looked, the fallen lay. They had given their lives, so there was a kind of beauty in it, but that beauty was only a blanket over a mountain of sorrow. There were slain cloven. Dogs nestled, breathless and still, against the bodies of their masters. There were dead ridgerunners, too. A lament rose to the heavens as the survivors mourned....The next morning was the warmest yet that spring. The sky was wide and high and blue with the breezy promise of new life. The rubble of Ban Rona was a terrible thing to see, but it didn’t seem as insurmountable as it had the night before. ... The streets were mostly empty, and the structures were mostly flattened, but the sky was so clear that it was impossible not to feel hopeful. Every broken building represented a restoration that was already underway.
What surprised you most this week? What made you cry? (If you want to talk about Gnag, come here)What thoughts do you have about the dragons? (Discuss here and here)Why are names so important? (Discuss here)If you had survived the battle, how would you help restore the city? Healing? Building? Singing?Please feel free to start new forum threads, or discuss here in the comments (careful of spoilers!) if you want to talk about anything else! I love hearing your thoughts. :-)
Dear readers, Andrew and I are thankful for you.Did you struggle through this week's reading? The first few chapters of Warden part four are bleak. The Igibys, and all Aerwiar, have been through so much in the last year—the last nine years? the last epoch?—and here at the beginning of the end, all our fears begin to take shape. Take heart.
Oskar and Podo stood together amidst the battle, two tired old men beholding the destruction of their world. Hollowsfolk and Fangs strove about them, and the dogs growled and howled and fell by the hundreds, and above it all Rudric’s voice bellowed for bravery.But the Fangs were too many.“It’s over,” Oskar said, leaning on his sword.Podo lifted his eyes and stared wearily out at the Fang-fraught bay, then at the Bat Fangs overhead. He seemed to have aged a hundred years in the space of a heartbeat, as if all his days and all his sorrows had caught up to him at once. Podo dusted two Grey Fangs as they rushed him, then set his gaze on the sea. The old pirate raised his sword in one hand, his legbone in the other.“It’s not over,” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s always a way out.”
Discussion: Have you ever felt the way Janner does in these chapters—like the Maker doesn't care, like he may not even be real? How do you hold on when you feel that way? (Talk about this here or in the forum.)How did you feel while reading Gnag's reasons for doing what he's done? (Come talk about this in the forum.)What did you most appreciate in this section of the book?How was your Thanksgiving? :-)
Have you ever been on a mountain gondola? I have—just a little one, nothing so grand or lonesome as this. When we reached the top, we clambered on rocks and fed nuts to some tiny, thwap-like creatures—chipmunks, I think they were called? An odd name. They reached up and put their little fingers on ours as they took the nuts from our hands. On the way down, the blanketing trees, still and silent and small as models, rose up to welcome us back to the earth.
“Janner, wake up,” Kalmar said.Janner sat up with a jerk. Kalmar pointed out the window at the breaking dawn. They couldn’t see the sun behind the mountains, but it painted the high clouds in the east in pinks and fair yellows. In the west lay a misty flatness that looked like the Dark Sea at dusk back in Glipwood. But it wasn’t the sea. It was the barren desert of the Woes of Shreve.The gondola was reaching its terminus. The mountainside was rocky and snowless, and Janner noticed that he wasn’t as cold as he had been all night. The chain that carried them stretched down toward a tiny cluster of buildings. ...As Janner studied the settlement, trying to judge the distance, he saw something that took his breath away. The buildings and the little platform where the gondola would come to rest were on the far side of a yawning chasm.The gondola lumbered forward, lurched over another pole, and swung the boys out over a rift in the earth so deep that it seemed to swallow the sunlight. It stretched away on either side as far as they could see, as if the mountains had decided one day to detach themselves from the rest of the continent. The chain drooped across it for several hundred yards, connecting to another platform on the other side. Birds—hawks and falcons and at least one rare gryfendril—wheeled in the empty air below them like fish swimming in the deep.Discussion: Would you have been brave enough to be the first to ride the gondola across the chasm?What was your favorite part of the story to read this week?If you've finished reading the series and would like to help us with a project, click here!
They raced down the torch-lit corridor with the sound of chaos fading behind them. When they reached the end of the corridor it split into three passageways. The one on the right led to a stair and they bounded up, two steps at a time.“I thought I lost you,” Janner said as they climbed.“I thought I lost me, too,” Kalmar said, “until you said your name. It brought me back. I attacked you, didn’t I?”“Yeah.”“I’m sorry.”“I forgive you,” Janner said. “And I forgive you for the next time, too, and the time after that."
Discussion: What power does forgiveness have? What does it cost? Can it cost too much? Is it worth it if the other person doesn't change? (Discuss here or in the forum)What songs do you sing when you need a weapon? (Discuss here or in the forum)What was your favorite passage this week?
