Today, we celebrate the day the Son of God embarked on thirty-some years of suffering and sorrow as a human, knowing that every day brought him closer to the cross. Divinity met with humanity not in spite of suffering, but with the intent to suffer, and thereby to one day eradicate suffering altogether.

Today may be wonderful. Today may be beautiful and filled with light and snuggly feelings. But your life is broken - in some way or another - and whether you remember the brokenness today or not, it will be there tomorrow. Christ did not come to obscure the brokenness for a little while. He confronts the brokenness, binds it up, and one day will remove it altogether.

Don't be content with vague ideas of a cute baby being born in a snuggly-warm stable scene with a darling cradle full of hay and an angelic donkey looking benevolently on. Remember the infant, but know that he is not still an infant. He lived, he suffered, he died, and he lived again. Remember the throne, and know that he is on the throne, ruling on your behalf with love, having known every pain and shame and borne it all perfectly for your sake.

Remember the birth, the fragile life, the death, and the unshakeable victory in the life he lives now, having put sin and death under his feet.

Such is the one who loves you.

Merry Christmas. ^.^

N.B.: I wrote this waaay back in October - I know because I found it sandwiched amidst NaNo plannings - but it seemed fitting enough for the right now. I've been meaning to type it up for a while - particularly for FB. ^.^ And yes, it does come with two TAN songs. See, this moves the fixation along a little more quickly...

[Life's Soundtrack - Ep. 03: Let It Go and You Are by Tenth Avenue North]

There was no precipice.

I had not come, like so many so often describe it, to the edge of some cliff where dwelt the invitation to blindly jump into the abyss of the unknown. There was no opportunity for a leap of faith, only a mostly level ground which sloped a little upwards and allowed me to see a little ways ahead and a little ways behind. The road itself was fairly smooth--a few bumps or potholes here and there, but mostly just a flat, broad path.

I had never taken such a leap. There had been the occasional moment here and there when I had had a swift sensation of being swept up, up, into the clouds and then beyond, where I could see the wind that stirred my hair move the weather as well. I had been minded in those instances of the vastness of the sky, of the many other lives that had trod this way before, and the Way had in becoming so much bigger than myself become my own to me.

Those moments never lasted long enough. All too soon, I would return to being Anna again. Anna was so very small, each step covering little more than a foot, each day's scenery never changing. There was no cliff, no daring call to risk it all for the unknown. All there was was the known, the flat, the visible. Surrender in that seemed impossible.

But then I ceased my plodding stride and looked up to the grey clouds blowing about in a sky that was too big for me and too small for my God, and I knew.

I had to surrender.

Truthfully, I'd have taken the cliff. A couple thousand feet seemed a vastly preferable option to a fall of no more than a few feet. Nobody quite knows what will come at the bottom of the cliff, but it is the ultimate surrender, the surrendering to end all surrendering, and you know it will be amazing. There is no going back to ordinary after the cliff. But I knew exactly what would follow this fall. I should have to get back up and keep on plodding, keep on watching the muted grays and greens and browns passing in my periphery, and then sometime after that I should have to surrender again - and again - and again. What lay before me contained no trace of going out in a blaze of glory. It was a muddled blur of dull colour and surrender after surrender after surrender...

Yet it had to be done. I clenched my teeth, resisted a few more seconds, and then yielded to the plunge.

I dropped to my knees.

There was no instantaneous quieting. I knew there would not be. The questions still assaulted me from every side. But then, though I knew nothing else, though the tears and queries had no answer but an echoing silence of Unfathomable, I knew the rightness of the position. In bitterness I had thought of myself as a dog performing tricks for its master, kneeling when the authority said "kneel," and receiving a paltry treat for my paltry efforts. Yet somehow, in the doing I came to understand that I was loved. It was not because of the surrender that I was loved, but still - somehow - it seemed - through the surrender.

Here is an end to it, I thought to myself. Here it is. I must do what is right and required. I shall lay these questions at His feet and walk away not claiming them for myself anymore. They are not mine, for though they belong to me I do not belong to myself.

I opened my mouth, but something boiled up into my throat then, and the questions would not make it past my tongue. They were a tangle of too many threads, threads of loathing and doubt and despair and fear and sorrow, all snagged on the ragged edges of my treacherous heart. It was beyond my power even to state them, much less surrender them. I had nothing to lay at his feet. I came not as a petitioner, but as a beggar. I could not even give him questions. If I came for anything, I came to receive, for mine was hunger, and thirst, and smallness.

"You - you - " I managed to choke a few words out at last, wrestling to speak still more. "You are!" Those two words hung in the silver sky. I felt the overwhelming conviction of having said nothing and yet there being no more to say. The words said nothing and meant everything. The stranglehold on my voice released slightly, and I gulped in air. It smelled - I thought a bit foolishly - of truth.

"What can I - how can I - who can I be apart from you? Every need and fulfillment is from you!" The words rushed out at once and I let them spill out carelessly. My voice felt like sandpaper in my throat but I soldiered on. "Trying to love you is like hunger and sickness. Being loved by you is death - and yet it is food and health. Where - what meat have I found here to satisfy my soul-hunger? What fountain could quench this soul-thirst? Is there a physician I could find among men to cure this soul-sickness, or a lover to satisfy enough past the restlessness? Where am I to be, if not in you?"

I saw myself: grasping, always grasping after things to satisfy me, wondering why the questions never fade. Oh! Why had I never seen? Behind every long-term question there stood not a direct answer or explanation, which may fade in memory or dim in reason and surety, but an eternal promise. And I saw that, though my questions might last a lifetime, they would end with me. But YOU, Unfathomable, Eternal, Existing - You would go on and on, promises never altering or fading, even as it is not within You to alter or fade.

My face fell to my chest. The weight of it - the foolishness of my questions - bowed my head with irreverent guilt. For a moment, I wanted to run. But a breeze stirred somewhere - was it the air around me, or something deep inside - and I felt my face lifted as it were by the touch of Infinite Goodness.

I could not help myself. The tenderness of it was all that of a father's, a brother's, a husband's, and still more in strength and truth and love. I stretched my arms to heaven and murmured again the first two words, thinking perhaps I understood the everythingness of something that seemed to say nothing.

"You are," then, "Friend," then again, "Husband," and still once more: "Abba."

There was nothing momentous about this, in reflection - simply a girl holding her arms up like a fool and waiting for her father to pick her up. I knew it would not be the last time I found myself in that position, and the knowledge gave me great comfort instead of the anticipated weariness. At last I moved my arms back to my side and stood. For a moment, I remained still, surveying the quiet green of the surrounding fields and the rich brown of the earthen path.

Then I took a step, and a dingy campus street reared to life about me. As I continued on my small ant-path to the next class, I fancied I could still feel damp spots at the knees of my jeans, where they might have met with the wet ground of that field.

You are.

No, this isn't a telegram. I mean it literally.

Stop.

What keeps you from honestly singing "my heart and my flesh thirst for the living God?" Why do you sing it often and yet never mean it - not just some days, which is good for you, or most days, which seems unreachable, but every day. What is wrong with you? Is it because you are not a Proverbs 31 woman, or because you do not love as 1 Corinthians 13 says, or because Psalm 15 does not accurately portray you? ...well, yes, you say. Your lack of holiness keeps you from being holy, from worshiping as someone who truly loves God. That much is obvious.

You say: yes, and that is good to know. So I suppose you shall now endeavor to be a Proverbs 31 woman. You'll probably go about quoting it in your emails and half-heartedly try to memorize it by heart and make catchy Flair buttons on Facebook to demonstrate your sincerity. And that could be great. That could be utterly useful.

So why is it so totally useless?

The answer is this: just quit. If you are trying to be a Proverbs 31 woman, or a Psalm 15 man, or whatever, stop. Stop trying. Don't throw it away altogether, but start someplace else. Don't start with Proverbs 31 - it provides a standard, which is useful but not in and of itself. Romans 8:3 says: For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. If you won't start with what He has done, you might as well quit altogether. You must either come in by the Gate He has provided, or enter as a thief and a liar.

There is something Proverbs 31 cannot do for you, something that must be done first. It cannot be the Gate. Seek that right entrance. Think of yourself as a Matthew 27:51 Christian.

Do you know what Matthew 27:51 says? No. You don't. That is what keeps you from understanding the love of God, what keeps you from drawing near to the throne of grace with boldness, what keeps you from holding yourself to standards greater than your own, what keeps you out of holiness.

Matthew 27:51 is the grace and love of God poured out upon sinners. Matthew 27:51 is the removal of shame and guilt. Matthew 27:51 is God inviting man into his very presence.

...and you don't know what it says?

Really, Anna, I'm surprised. I'm flabbergasted. You do know what it says, of course - as soon as I read it to you you'll smack your forehead and say "Oh, yes, I know that. Of course that happened." Because you know your Bible so well - but you don't really know it.

I don't want you to know it that way. I want you to know it so keenly that you are defined by it - I want the knowledge of this as it applies directly to you to overflow into your life, into your prayer time and your bible reading time and your fastings and your repentings and your resisting-temptations, and I don't want you to know yourself by all the quiet times and good deeds and sin-fighting, I want you to know those times by this.

Take Matthew 27:51, and ponder it, Anna, when you are at the bottom of what seems to be the blackest pit despair can build.

Ponder when in the selfish arrogance of your heart you have supposed that your sin is greater than the love of God.

Remember it when holiness eludes you and sin snares you once again.

Meditate on it when you survey your soul and find it very bent indeed, so bent away from the nature of God that you could never look on His face and live.

Rejoice in it when it seems the church is dead and forsaken, when a relationship has been fractured beyond all imaginable means of reparation, when father and mother forsake you and you begin to wish you could forsake yourself, when there is no strength for the weak limbs and feeble joints.

Ponder this:

AND BEHOLD, THE CURTAIN OF THE TEMPLE WAS TORN IN TWO, FROM TOP TO BOTTOM. AND THE EARTH SHOOK, AND THE ROCKS SPLIT.

This is you.

The curtain is torn. Christ has done this on your behalf, so that you might enter the presence of God by His works and His righteousness, and there is no sin you can think or commit that can mend the tear or alter this fact in any way.

Your earth has been shaken, your dead-rock heart split to the core and turned to a living, hopeful rose, and your God lives.

Why does November being over make such a difference, you may ask? Well, I just wrapped up thirty days (that being November) of writing madness in which all people who happen to write and also happen to lack anything resembling reason all throw aside as much of their lives as they can for the same of writing fifty thousand words in the space of the month. I was actually going for Finish-the-Novel-in-a-Month rather than just the 50K, but in the end I clocked out at a little over 100K with an unfinished novel. However, it's much closer to being done than ever before, and for that I must thank NaNo for providing motivation and God for making me reckless enough to allow myself to be driven by such.

Some of it might wind up on here. I've been warned against putting whole works on the internet, but we'll see if portions don't make it through every now and again. When I'm feeling lazy and such.

It's a bit overwhelming, actually. Sometimes I just sort of sit and stare at this world my pen has created, and find it very bare. It's sort of like a half-coloured in black and white sketch. There are aspects of it that are very vivid, and other aspects that are entirely blank, and I can't quite put my finger on what colour should go there. I may get very close according to my silly human way of tallying things, but my work will always pale in compare to the work of The Creator.

And maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. I found a "Fantasy Worldbuilding" questionnaire online and started filling it out to make sure I knew everything about it, but quickly threw that idea away. If I'm going to write a book from the perspective of children, I don't want to be a source of random facts. It won't be a story at all if it's just a chance for me to show off how having two suns in a universe affects the tides (my universe doesn't have two suns, by the way. Just an example) and how clever an author I am for making that up. I want to still have that childlike view of delight and a bit of stupidity - that assumption that things just work this way, and that's the way it is, and being able to get beyond the mechanics to the wonder of it all.

Anyway, I like to think I have a kind of talent for making up ridiculous explanations after the fact which will suit this kind of story very well indeed.


Meanwhile, the semester is almost out, and I'm staring at the next. Not sure what it's going to look like. I have a sort of "make it 'till next fall" mentality at this point, which probably needs to be lost because the mere fact that next fall has arrived won't fix anything.

Inky: Christa, do you ever stop being hungry?
Christa: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It depends.
Inky: Depends on what?
Christa: On whether I'm hungry or not.

But don't you know who you are,
What has been done to you?
Don't you know who you are?

You are more than the choices that you make
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes
You are more than the problems you create -
You've been remade.

101st post! I thought someone else's words were more deserving of this auspicious place than my own. (Mike gave this talk almost word-for-word at the concert I attended... when he says something about still recovering at the beginning, that's in reference to being in the Christian school system. I hope the related song - which was excellent too; lyrics above - is on the new album. ^_^)

“Hearing Oskar call him and his siblings ‘the stuff of legends’ gave Janner goose bumps, but it also gave him a shiver in his stomach. He had read enough stories to know that legends became so by great suffering and great feats. Janner didn’t want to suffer, and he wasn’t sure he was brave enough or smart enough to accomplish anything legendary. ... [He] shook his head at the wonder of it.”


By Way Of Introducing

Every now and again, my youngest brother Calvin (8) invites me to ‘play outside’ with him. Usually we go for a walk, hunt for skinks, or perform some similar venture requiring nothing but a stick or two and a wealth of imagination. These times are immensely precious and endearing. Long will I treasure in my memory the winding, lilting conversations, or when Calvin breaks into a period of silence with a dreamy statement of “I like our family; don’t you?” We are always building stories together—stories about the neighbors’ horses, about dragonflies meeting the evil wasps in battle. There are many speculations to be made—the smallest llama of the pack that surely has the greatest spitting-range of the lot. And then there are the millions of wee, childlike fantasies beginning with “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” These moments of seeing the world through a child’s eyes and really almost being a child again myself are the moments worth remembering, for they are the moments when God paints his world with the boldest and most beautiful colours of grace and my mind’s eye is free to behold with wonder.

All that digression is to say, if walks with my youngest brother were books, they’d be Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga. As a fan of Andrew Peterson, this comes as a reaffirmation of what I’ve known (and been delighted by) since Track 4 of his Far Country album: Andrew’s little boy heart is most definitely still alive (the song’s name is “Little Boy Heart Alive,” by the way). Everything I’ve come to appreciate and expect of Messr. Peterson—which is quite a bit—was met and surpassed in these books. The language is striking and poetic (no surprise to anyone who’s paid an ounce of attention to his song lyrics), the story is simple enough to be beautiful and complex enough to be engaging (sort of like the Gospel content in his songs), and did I mention? The ‘scope of this man’s imagination seems to know no limits. When it comes to personalities and creatures, you never know what you’ll meet around the next bend in this story (think Narnia meets Milne's Winnie-ther-Pooh). The only thing you know for certain is that you’ve never seen the likes of it before…

Who Is Andrew Peterson?

Andrew Peterson is the author of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Book One in the Wingfeather Saga, and The Ballad of Matthew’s Begats. He’s also the critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter and recording artist of ten albums, including Resurrection Letters II. He and his wife, Jamie, live with their two sons and one daughter in a little house they call The Warren near Nashville, Tennessee. Visit his websites: www.andrew-peterson.com and www.rabbitroom.com

What Is The Story?

Without giving away too much of the plot (hopefully), the general idea of the story is as follows. On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (Book 1 of the Saga) tells the tale of Janner Igiby, a young Skreean lad with an imagination which is beginning to stretch past the boundaries of his family’s little cottage in Glipwood. His thirst for adventure and desire to find out more about his past lead Janner, his brother Tink, and his sister Leeli through a series of trials and adventures. Dark Sea culminates with the revelation that they’re not just ordinary children, but the stuff of legends, heirs to a kingdom across the sea.

In North! Or Be Eaten (Book 2), the story continues to center around Janner. The Igiby children quickly discover that being the stuff of legends basically means that ‘most everybody good has forgotten you and ‘most everybody bad wants to kill you. Thus, they are forced to flee Glipwood Town and their childhood world. Their escape brings readers to the very brink of Fingap Falls, over the Stony Mountains, and across the Ice Prairies, while villains galore try to stop the Igibys permanently. Fearsome toothy cows and horned hounds return, along with new dangers: a mad man running a fork factory (woe!), a den of rockroaches, and majestic talking sea dragons (quite possibly the best literary rendering of dragons ever, I think).

Repent! Or Be Eaten (Not Really, But Yeah)

In one sense, North! isn’t obviously written by a Christian. There is nothing overtly Christian or moralizing about the tale. It takes place in another world, and while the family serves ‘the Maker’ there are no references to Christ or God’s Word. At the same time, in another sense, the author is obviously a Christian because the story resounds with the Christian imagination. The themes and movement of the story just make sense to a Christian mind. Yes, the style and plot are creative and exciting, but they’re also familiar because they come from a well of Christian suppositions and Christ-centered thinking.

For instance, in the first book the evil from the broader world has to be brought to light in the semi-idyllic lifestyle of the Igibys. There’s a brilliant scene where Janner is enjoying the happy scene of a festival, until the well-placed remark of an elder opens his eyes to the falseness of this happiness. Janner has grown up happy and content, but only because his eyes have been stopped to the misery and joylessness of the existence of those around him. Once his eyes are opened, he and his family are unable to live in complacency towards the evil around them any longer. This progression is easily related to the Christian life: it’s easy to build a cocoon around ourselves and pretend that there isn’t a war raging over our heads, but sooner or later we must don our armour and step into the battle.

North! Or Be Eaten further explores the nature of that battle. Igiby children leavethe world which they had previously (in Dark Sea) only observed passively as it invaded their cocoon. As they battle the evil in the broader world, they discover more and more the struggle they face to pursue their callings in a Maker-honoring fashion rather than as a means of paying homage to Self. Suddenly, Janner has the responsibility of a legend on his shoulders. At the same time, he’s finding that the responsibility given him long before he discovered his heirship hasn’t gone anywhere, and proves to be the hardest of all to carry. This responsibility is perhaps more legendary than inheriting a kingdom: ‘love one another.’ This is easily understood in the Christian context as well: battling principalities and powers at work within our culture, all the while keenly aware of the battle for our own souls that takes place internally.

Another highly understandable theme is the triumph of good over evil. Darkness is not treated flippantly, but even when it gets awfully dark its conquest is never quite complete. There is also the conflict between hope and despair. Of course, hope reigns strong in a beautiful way, and there are even splashes of humor throughout the darkest of situations.

(Just as a disclaimer, the resounding Christianity throughout the book really is more of the total picture and definitely not restricted to a few specific ideas conjured by my own dubious brain. There are certainly specifics to be ‘logicked’ out of the plot, but I don’t want the idea of the totality of it obscured by my paltry specifics. It really is like being in a fictional place full of strange things one has never seen or heard of before—and yet finding yourself at home. That’s as best as I can describe it.)

By Way Of Concluding

If you haven't read Dark Sea or North!, do. The story is beautiful and engaging, and you'll have tons of fun. You’ll learn about Toothy Cows, Thwaps, Totatoes, the Fangs of Dang, and many other creatures and persons with delightfully odd names. But there’s more—there’s courage and laughter, sorrow and pain, hatred and darkness, and a whole lot of love. In an immensely fun way, North! Or Be Eaten portrays a world painted with the grace of God in wondrously bright colours. The ‘little boy heart alive’ of the story combined with a simple yet intricately-woven Christ-likeness turn a fun, lively fantasy tale into a bright gem of literature that can be understood and appreciated at many levels.

Oh - and be sure to watch those footnotes.

N.B.: Andrew Peterson’s bio, as well as portions of the book synopsis, were given me by the publicist and therefore are not actual inventions of my own. The same goes for the artwork and quote.

Few people like pain, and it's not just because all pain is extremely painful. The general aversion to pain is largely due to pain's universal ability to remind us of our finitude. We have very little control over our bodies and the sicknesses that enter and leave them. Oh, we're quite good at masking pain - if it's drugs you need for that, we have them a-plenty. But in the medical field, almost nobody talks about curing things anymore. They help the body along a bit and hope it takes care of the rest, and in the meantime here's a happy pill to keep you from thinking about the hole we made in your body while we were cutting the cancer out (we really hope it doesn't come back).

So - there is no longer a new layout, but there are a few slight changes, one of those being a semi-permanent explanation for the sudden appearance and then even more sudden disappearance of said new layout (which is now in the past and actually an old layout... go read Augustine's mumblings on time if you want to make your head spin with this. Much as I like seeing heads spin, I shan't bite tonight).

Anyhow, I just wanted to sort of introduce a couple of things that ought to be popping up soon.

1. Book Review. I've agreed to be part of the blog tour for Andrew Peterson's North! Or Be Eaten (tee hee - yes, that is pretty much a me-title... only I didn't write it...), which means I'll be giving a few thoughts on the book and such. Look for that somewhere between September 14 - 18.

2. Story. I've been hashing out an allegoryish over the last week or so. It's been slow-going for the most part; finally started coming along this morning. I'm trying to finish that up before it dries out and gets dusty.

3. Songs. I've added this handy little mixpod-thingamajig to the sidebar over there. It lets you make your own music playlist and paste it up wherever, and in the spirit of conforming to a me-centered culture - oh, no, wait. The point of this is to not be me-centered. Anyhow, I've taken to referencing songs in my posts, and I'm always trying to foist music off onto other people, so I thought: why not make that a regular habit? There are many songs that have had pretty deep impacts on my life, so I'm thinking of making a weekly or bimonthly habit of writing a post on why/how a specific song has effected me, and then try to get it up on that playlist so you can hear it - because while I try to be a bit selective with lyrics quality, everyone knows that (lyrics + music = uber win) > (lyrics). There's only one song up now - I've referenced it before - but I'll give it its own post before I continue.

Such are my plans. Reality, no doubt, shall tell a vastly different tale.

This is basically a journal-entry from a month or so ago that I never actually wrote down directly after it happened. I remembered the experience last night and felt I needed to write it down - not to preserve it for all posterity, but because I needed to sort of go through it again. It was a good experience. The format of characters is a bit odd, but I hope it's not too confusing and that nobody misses the twist-ish at the end.