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Adorning the Dark: Week 8

Dear readers and subcreators! This is our last week reading Adorning the Dark together. It's been such a joy reading along with you, discussing what stands out, digging into themes and questions, and hearing what you're working on. Thanks for joining in. Here's one last excerpt, and another couple discussion-starters, and we'll have a creative prompt on Friday—but the conversation doesn't have to stop this week. Keep coming back if you want to keep talking. (And join us in January to read Walking on Water.)

Right before my first tour in Sweden I called my dad.

"Dad, we're Swedish, right?"

He laughed. "Yeah, my grandfather emigrated from there to Amherst, Massachusetts."

"Do you know where he was from? What was his name?"

"His name was Ernest, but they used to spell it 'Ernst.' According to my records, he came from a city called Kalmar." ...

One of my dreams, after a few tours there, was to bring my whole family so they could meet the friends I'd made and walk the land our forefathers had walked. In 2013 it finally happened.... We climbed through the brush as [our eighty-year-old guide] chattered to us in Swedish, though we had indicated several times that we didn't speak it.

And there it was, surrounded by tall trees: a cellar, probably for storing potatoes, which would have been under the cottage. The big stones that lined it were green with moss, placed in a rough square about five feet across. Humus and leafy debris littered the bottom, and when I jumped in it was springy. ...

But the story wasn't over. The next time I was in Sweden I couldn't stop wondering what had happened to the rest of my family. Every time I met a Peterson (which is pretty often over there) I wondered if we were related. So I kept digging on the websites, kept pressing my dad for more information, and every time I came back the hunt resumed.

Then, in 2016, I found them. ... When [Ingrid] arrived at the concert I knew her immediately. She looked vaguely like my grandfather. ... We walked through the old stone church he would have attended and saw the thousand-year-old baptismal font. No joke, there was a Viking rune stone outside the church, surrounded by wild daisies. ...

Even after all that, I ache for home. I still yearn for a place to belong. Even with the stone arch and the cottage garden and the memories of young laughter among the low-hung trees, even as I've tasted honey the bees conjured from wildflowers on my own land, though it was as sweet as the righteous Word of the Lord—even still, Jamie and I move through our story and sense the unfinishedness of things. As I sit in The Chapter House I can see on the wall, next to the painting of Castle Kalmar, a hundred signatures of friends who have spent time in here, and though I hold dear the remembrance of their fellowship I know their bodies are winding ever down, as mine is, to a long and expectant sleep. Though we strike out on the Christmas tour every December, my friends and I, to sing the story of the Incarnation, we carry with us a quiet hollow in the heart, an unrung bell that waits to sound with the final note of the reappearing of the Lamb of God. My brother and I continue to serve the Rabbit Room ministry, setting a table for the writers and artists, bards and wanderers who can't shake the feeling of a spiritual homesickness. We feel it too. At church, even when I receive the Eucharist and sing songs of the Good King with my friends and family, I feel that same persistent longing, dogging my every step. My heart, God help me, is restless, and has ever been so. What, Jesus, can I do?

Write about it, a voice says in my head. Tell that story.

But I get so tired. I know my heart is plagued with sin after sin after sin—sins that would appall you, dear reader—and the voice still says Write about that. Don't hold it in. Watch how even that can bring me glory.

Ah, Lord, I'm so weak! And so foolish. I've hurt my wife, my children, my friends. I just want to go home.

Write that song. Write that story. Homesickness is the way home.

Discussion: What is one way you can let homesickness point you—and those for whom you create—toward home?

What chapter or phrase, challenge or idea has most stood out to you in these eight weeks of reading?

Join us in the forum for more conversation.

Adorning the Dark: Week 7

"Art nourishes community. Community nourishes art." Andrew's been saying this for years, and I've seen beautiful ways that's played out in his relationships, in the Rabbit Room community, and in some of my friendships, also. I hope you have, too. Let's talk about that.

After the low sales of Love & Thunder ... I got the fated phone call that I was being dropped.

Oh, how I wished Rich Mullins were still alive, just to have someone to talk to. I didn't want to be worried about money. I wanted to be a barefoot vagabond musician who laughed his way through trouble and sang about Jesus to whomever would listen. But when you have a wife and three babies, you can't just not think about money. ...

He said, "Andrew, I have two things I want to talk to you about. First, and I'm sorry to say this, but in the light of the sales of your last album, we're not going to renew your contract for the next two. Second, I know you've been talking about writing a book—a fantasy novel, wasn't it? I spoke to a literary agent named Don who's interested, and I'd love to connect you two."

Even though I could tell he was throwing me a bone with the book contract, it was a kind gesture and I appreciated it. (As a side note, Don ended up being my agent and helped secure the publishing deal with Waterbrook/Random House for On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, so it was a very good bone the label threw.) But in the moment I was devastated.

It never feels good to fail. Even if I knew all the Sunday school answers—answers I actually believed, by the way—the truth was, a bunch of people who believed in my music did a lot of work and put a lot of money on the line to try and sell it, and there was something about it that just fell flat somehow. I wasn't a valuable enough commodity to keep on the roster. ... I can still remember the brick-in-the-gut feeling I had when the call was over, the eerie, foreboding sense that something significant had just happened which would alter the shape of my life.

Here's what I didn't tell you about that phone call.

For years I had badgered the label to let me record Behold the Lamb of God, and for years they had said no. Finally they wrote me out of the contract for it, saying that they didn't want it, and it wouldn't count as one of the required albums on my contract but if I wanted to find the money myself and release it independently, I could. The day I was dropped from the label I was standing in Osenga's backyard while he and Ben were in the basement studio recording electric guitars on "So Long Moses."

I hung up the phone, took a deep breath, wiped a tear from my eye, and walked back into the studio. The guys were probably laughing at something and didn't notice at first that my face was pale.

"I just got dropped from my label," I told them.

They stopped laughing and offered their condolences. Then after a few moments of silence someone said, "So about this guitar part. Do you want it to come in at the top of the chorus?"

And we were off and running. It was God's kindness to me that I was not only in the middle of a project and had so much work to do that there was no time to wallow in self-pity, but I was surrounded by friends, by community, by people who told me implicitly by their involvement in my life and work that this was still worth doing, label or no label. It felt so good to walk back into the basement, roll up my sleeves, and try to craft an album about Jesus.

That's community. They look you in the eye and remind you who you are in Christ. They reiterate your calling when you forget what it is. They step into the garden and help you weed it, help you to grow something beautiful.

Discussion: How has community played a role in your life and art?

While he doesn't directly mention this in his book, Andrew has an old song from Clear to Venus called "Hold Up My Arms." In it there's a line that says, "So hold up my arms / Like Moses in the desert, when the battle ran long / Hold up my arms / We can go at this together when my arms aren't strong." Have you ever experienced a time when you couldn't keep going without the help of a trusted friend? Have you been able to hold up another's arms so they can keep going?

(And did you notice that we might not have had Wingfeather—and thus this very discussion!—or Behold the Lamb if that horrible phone call hadn't happened?)

Come on over to the forum for more discussion!

TONIGHT: Behold the Lamb of God is streaming live at the Ryman! It's going to be wonderful. Get your ticket here.

Adorning the Dark: Week 6

Before we dive in today: CONGRATULATIONS to our dear Andrew—Adorning the Dark was named Arts & Culture book of the year by the Gospel Coalition! I love what they said about it. Click here to read more. (And click here for BTLOG info—Andrew's 20th annual Christmas tour is underway! And it's being livestreamed next Monday, so if your city isn't on the tour or is sold out, come to the livestream!)

And now, onward.

Here’s a strange memory: when I was a kid in Illinois I discovered a pile of shoveled sidewalk snow in someone’s front yard. At some point I decided that that snowpile needed a boy-sized tunnel dug right through the center, so on the way home from kindergarten I stopped every day for about a week and worked, though I had no idea whose house it was. After fifteen minutes or so I’d head home so my mom wouldn’t be worried. All day at school my mind was occupied with that tunnel. It wasn’t as if I had never dug a tunnel in the snow before, and I’ve often wondered why I remember this one so vividly. But there was something simple and delightful to my little six-year-old self about working at this tunnel alone, in secret, a little at a time for a whole week. The day I finally broke through to the other side I brushed the snow off my pants and stood there, mittened hands on my hips, admiring my work. Then I felt someone watching me. I turned around and saw a woman in the house at the window, peeking out at me with a kind face. She might have waved. I pretended not to see her. I was deeply embarrassed as I realized that she had probably been watching me for days.

Memories choose us. Of all the things that must have happened during my childhood—little adventures, moments of shame or joy or comfort—only a few images, like this one, rise to the surface. And they don’t just rise once. They come to me again and again as if there’s some mystery hidden in all the plainness, as if someday I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and understand why that snow tunnel is stuck in my head.

The next week as I passed the house (on the other side of the street) I noticed that the pile was gone. I’ve always suspected that the woman and her husband never intended to leave it by their driveway, but they noticed a little boy stopping to dig every day and graced me with a week of peaceful, pointless work. I wonder if it gave her something to do, someone to watch for, something to talk about with her husband at dinner during a long, featureless winter.

Earlier today I was working on a new song, alone in the house, and it felt just like digging. I wonder if someone was watching from a high window?

While the obsessive tendency can be a boon to someone with a career in the arts, the thing can come back to bite you. Because, like it or not, if you want to get paid to do this stuff you have to actually do the work. And once you realize you’re responsible for your family by either caring for the children or providing a full-time income, art—no matter how fun it was in the beginning—becomes work. It becomes a chore. It becomes burdensome. It’s suddenly so much easier to get excited about that other project that just won’t leave you alone. And so you start something new, which is natural and quite welcome. But then that gets old and you start four more new things, and you realize you’ve bitten off more than you can chew and nothing gets done, least of all the project that got you going in the first place. So as much as I may gripe about my teachers and parents and the busywork I was expected to do, there comes a time for us all when we have to reckon with it. Sometimes you have to do the work even if you don’t feel like it. Sometimes you have to put away your wants and do what needs to be done, which really means dying to self in order to find life. This is a way of practicing resurrection. ...

Those of us who write, who sing, who paint, must remember that to a child a song may glow like a nightlight in a scary bedroom. It may be the only thing holding back the monsters. That story may be the only beautiful, true thing that makes it through all the ugliness of a little girl's world to rest in her secret heart. May we take that seriously. It is our job, it is our ministry, it is the sword we swing in the Kingdom, to remind children that the good guys win, that the stories are true, and that a fool's hope may be the best kind.

If you're called to do this sort of work, then keep those dear ones in your mind as you fight your way up the long mountain of obedience. You'll be tempted to slow down, or take an easier route—but it is only by discipline that you'll finish, and it's only in finishing that you'll be able to offer up your humble work to those weary souls who may need it.

Discussion: What stories or songs have met you in a dark night?

Do you have the trouble Andrew does in focusing on a project long enough to finish it? What do you think that's about? Can you think of any times you've been able to push through it? What helped?

Come on over to the forum for more conversation. (I love hearing from you guys. You've engaged and shared so bravely.)

Adorning the Dark: Prompt 5

"The other reason young songwriters’s songs are too long is that their songs are about five things instead of one," Andrew says in chapter 11. That's a hard impulse to control! So today we're going to practice together, using the writing exercise Andrew learned from Anne Lamott. Ready? This one is a writing prompt and a craft. ;-)

  1. Get a little notecard or a piece of cardstock, or something like that, and measure a one-inch-by-one-inch square on it. Very carefully, use the tip of a scissor to poke through the middle of that square, and then cut along the edges so that the middle square comes out. Now you have a one-inch picture frame!
  2. Choose an old family photo. (You can print one out if you can't find a scrapbook.)
  3. Put that one-inch picture frame over the photo. Move it around to see what shows up inside it. When you're satisfied (or intrigued, or inspired, or antsy to start)—
  4. Write only about what shows up in that one-inch frame.

Back to Andrew: "Don’t write about Uncle Clarence if he’s not in there. Maybe write about his shoulder there in the corner, but focus on the blurry painting on the wall in the background, or Aunt Gertrude’s pearl earring. Lamott’s point is that you can fill pages and pages with what’s in that tiny space. One thought leads to another, leads to another, leads to another, and when that string runs out you can return to the one-inch frame and find another telling element to get you running."

You can also do this without a photo! Curl your thumb and index finger into a little square (it will probably be about an inch or a bit smaller, but exactness doesn't matter too much for this). Hold that little finger-frame up and move it around. You can "zoom in" on a tree branch, on a feature of someone's face, on a part of a building or sign, on what's on the shelf, on no more than half of the dog. Doing this, like using a frame in a photo above, helps you to cut out the clutter and focus on one small thing. And once you can identify one small thing, you can write about it.

Adorning the Dark: Week 5

This week (chapters 10-11) Andrew's getting into some real nuts-and-bolts writerly advice, which I suspect we've all been waiting for. Today we'll focus on chapter 10, since there's a built-in creative prompt in chapter 11 that'll be perfect for Friday.

A song is like a spell. You learn to say it exactly right, inflect the words just so, play the thing at the perfect tempo, and then sometimes you’re truly wielding a mysterious power. The spell can then be repeated by others. You don’t even have to be there. By God’s grace, a good song can inject beauty into some unsuspecting passerby and lead them to the truth. At a concert you can see it happen: people holding still as statues, arrested by the chord progression, the musical hook, the unfolding of a story or idea, the slight modifications to each verse or chorus to keep their attention. Something as real as a tectonic shift may be happening in their magnificent souls, like the mechanism of a primal clock ticking closer and closer to the triumphant sounding of the bell in the tower, a revelation, a scattering of birds that gives them an apocalyptic glimpse of something more, something lofty and grand that reminds them how small they are, or perhaps something miniscule and profoundly intricate that reminds them of the grand mystery of their selfhood. The song is a tightrope, and the listener is inching along, enraptured by the hope and light raveling in the middle distance. Don’t, for goodness sake, distract them. Hold your breath. They’re lost in another world, peeking through the fur coats at the wintry glory of Lantern Waste. They’re holding still while a butterfly lights on an outstretched forearm. When that happens, the world falls away and you’re both a channel for and a recipient of grace.

That’s what it means to serve the work and to serve the listener. Proceed with utmost care. Whatever you do, don’t let their glasses fall off. Don’t break the spell.

“Write it like you would say it.”

I can’t tell you how many times over the years that maxim has snapped me out of whatever florid garbage I was writing. It’s a good idea to emulate your heroes, to ask yourself when you get to the bridge, “What would Paul Simon do?” Or when you’re writing a sermon, “What would Spurgeon do?” Or when you happen upon a guitar part which, miracle of miracles, sounds unique enough to try and build a song upon, to ask, “How does James Taylor get into a part like this?” Steal boldly, I say.

But most often, when I’m scribbling in a notebook the nonsense that I hope will become a not-unbearable song, when it’s late and I’m sleepy and I’m stuck, stuck, stuck, I remember those words: “Write it like you would say it.” It usually opens the door to the lyric I was looking for. It keeps me from putting on airs, which we’re all prone to do. People can spot a fake a mile away. It’s the difference between reading a speech from a podium and looking someone in the eye and telling them, “I love you.” It communicates to the listener that you’re not pulling any punches but you’re not blocking any either. “Trust me,” it says. “This might hurt, but if we make it out alive we’ll be better for it.”

Discussion: When you're casting about for a hero to emulate, what is it about your their work that speaks to you? How can emulating them help you grow? How can it keep you from growing?

Come on over to the forum for more conversation—including how you would say it.

Adorning the Dark: Prompt 4

This week's creative prompt is from Andrew himself! If you follow him on social media, you have probably seen all of the pencil drawings he's been doing lately. (If not, go give him a follow! He's on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.) Here's the sketch he did last night, along with his comments below:

https://www.facebook.com/andrewpetersonmusic/photos/a.10151538890141968/10156452129631968

So there you have it. Go Google "How to draw a tree." Pick a video and sketch away. :-) And if you post it online anywhere, tag Andrew! I bet he'd be thrilled to see you practicing your THAGS right along with him. :-)

The stories are true.