Andrew Peterson - Adorning the Dark

Copyright 2019 by Andrew Peterson

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-5359-4902-6

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 234.13

Subject Heading: CREATIVE WRITING / CREATION (LITERARY, ARTISTIC, ETC.) / SPIRITUAL GIFTS

Scripture references are taken from the English Standard Version. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Cover design and illustration by Stephen Crotts.

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For Christie Bragg

Without your tireless, faithful, encouraging, boots-on-the-ground work, most of the stuff in this book wouldnt have happened. Ideas are a breeze. Incarnating them is more like a hurricane, and youve ridden the storm with me and mine for twenty years now.

I cant thank you enough.

Preface

O ver the years Ive been asked to teach about songwriting, novel writing, creativity and the arts, and community. Sometimes its for a conference. Sometimes its for a school, college, or seminaryand every time I feel out of my league. Part of that is due to the fact that I know what a knucklehead I am. Part of it is because Im a practitioner, not an academic. That means I havent hunkered over ancient tomes in a library researching the arts; nor have I written lengthy papers on the subject under the tutelage of a professor. It means Ive learned by doing, which is a nice way of saying that I learned by doing it wrong half the time.

I was nineteen when I had a head-on collision with Jesus through the music of Rich Mullins, and I gave the next twenty-six to a stumbling pursuit of a calling. (If you can add, now you know how old I am.) That calling, as I understand it, is to use whatever gifts Ive been given to tell the truth as beautifully as I can. Ive written a few hundred songs, played a few thousand concerts, written a handful of books, and executive produced an animated short film based on those books. Somewhere along the way I realized the writing life (and life in general) works best in the confines of a community, which led to the creation of a ministry called The Rabbit Room.

The Rabbit Room, inspired in part by the Oxford Inklings, is a gathering point for Christians with a similar calling to try and tell the truth beautifullyand part of the point is that none of us can do it alone. Theres no doubt in my mind that whats shaped me and my work more than any particular talent on my part has been living out a calling in the midst of a Christ-centered community.

I dont have a PhD (Im holding out for an honorary doctorate, thank you), and for that matter, I wasnt a very good student. This teaching thing, then, is not something I foresaw. There are days when I dream about going back to school to really dig in, to be the old guy who sits on the front row and asks all the annoying questions, but then I talk to graduate students about the papers theyre writing, the research involved, the defense of their thesesand I doubt that I have it in me to do something so rigorous. As youll see, Ive spent a lot of my life following my nose, usually turning up that nose whenever Im expected to do something I dont feel like doing. I realize this is a weakness. But its a weakness God has redeemed again and again, one that has gotten me into a lot of trouble, the getting out of which has always led to something healing or edifying.

Im not afraid of hard work, but I do have an aversion to work that feels like a waste of time. That means I tend to throw myself into big projects, usually a few at a time, work until my mind is jelly, and if I dont have a proper break then Im going to have a proper breakdown.

Many, many times over the years Ive told my sweet Jamie, We just have to make it until____ , then things will calm down, I promise, and theres some truth to it. But Jamie and I both know that once things calm down, some new harebrained idea will float to the surface of my gray matter and will start it all up again. My longsuffering manager Christie has the task of talking me out of truly dumb ideas, talking me into things I dont at first see the value in, coming up with a plan for the ideas that stick, and reminding me six months later when Im frustrated and tired that this is exactly what I wanted to dothat it was my idea, after all.

To not learn at least something of value over the last few decades of creative work would be odd, and though I dont often feel very smart, I do in fact have some strong opinions about the way things are, and those opinions are based at least in part on experience.

The first few times I was in a position of leadership at a retreat or conference I was so nervous I could hardly speak. When my dear friend Kenny Woodhull asked me to co-lead a retreat with Michael Card about fifteen years ago, I declined. Putting on a concert is one thing; I could do that. But teaching? Speaking? Leading? Clearly Kenny had the wrong guy. But he talked me into it. At the first session of that retreat, after Michael gave his brilliant introductory thoughts, it was my turn to say a few words. I stammered as I told them that I felt unqualified, but that I had to trust something George MacDonald once wrote about the inner chamber of Gods heart:

As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father. And for each God has a different response. With every man he has a secretthe secret of the new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter . . . a chamber into which no brother, nay, no sister can come.

From this it follows that there is a chamber also(O God, humble and accept my speech)a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar manout of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was madeto reveal the secret things of the Father .

That is to say, you know and understand things about the heart of God that only you can teach. Once I was in a counseling session with my dear friend Al Andrews, working through a painful season of my childhood. I dont know whats wrong with me, I said with a sniffle. My brother and sisters dont seem to carry this same pain, and we were all there at the same time, in the same house. Al said, If I were to interview four siblings about their childhoods, they would each describe a completely different family. Your story, then, is yours and no one elses. Each sunset is different, depending on where you stand. So when the voices in my head tell me I have nothing to offer, nothing interesting to say, I fight back with George MacDonald.

Jesus said, In my Fathers house are many rooms (John 14:2). Could it be that those rooms are inner chambers in the heart of God, each of which has an individuals name on it? If this is true, and Id like to believe it is, then all I have to do is tell about my Lord and my God. Because I know him intimately, uniquely, it may be a revelation, in a sense, of the secret things of the Father. This is part of my callingto make known the heart of God. And because he holds a special place in his heart for me and me alone (just as he holds a special place for you), my story stands a chance to be edifying to my sisters and brothers, just as your story, your insight, your revelation of Gods heart, is something the rest of us need.

In that spirit, this book is a glimpse into my own faltering journey as a songwriter, storyteller, and Christian. Its a love song, if you will, about the life God has given me.