Hunter Dansin

This is the eternal renewal. – Virginia Woolf

This phrase from the end of The Waves has been hanging in my mind lately. How everyday we are renewed when we sleep and wake, how relationships fade and then renew as we separate and come back together, how creative energy waxes and wanes, how we celebrate Easter to remember that the tomb is empty.

“Yes, this is the eternal renewal.” And yet even on the mountain of renewal, we remember that we will go down again, that joy is sometimes a plodding thing that we do not know we have until we have been carrying it for some time. Writing, like life, is no paved way. It requires endurance and eternally renewed hope.

Writing

One page at a time. What more can I say? Writing is hard, but I think I have a clarity about the process that is very helpful. I am trying to let the story unfold itself to the end, while at the same time understanding that I can go back and change it in the rewrite and edit.

Music

I have been experiencing an obsession with the guitar that I haven't felt in a long time. It feels like a renewal of the energy that got me my first calluses back in high school. Will be trying to figure out more things by ear and hopefully start to climb past the plateau that I feel I have been at for a long time.

Audiobook

Sorry friends, I can't promise when episodes will be up. But they will be eventually. As long as I am alive anyway.

Podcast

Exciting stuff coming. Our first in person episodes ever!

Reading/Listening

Re-reading The Lord of the Rings again. Feels like coming home. I was worried I might not like it, or that my imagination would be somehow too polluted to enjoy it, but it feels fresh, and there are many parts I totally forgot. There is so much we forget about a book. Tolkien was not a novelist, but like Thomas Hardy, he worked and worked to make all the “incorrect” techniques he uses come together in a form that achieves his goal. It's the only way to do real writing in my opinion. It is also encouraging to learn that Tolkien finished the whole series before they were published, and thought of them as one book. I am going to try and follow his example.

Also reading Disruptive Witness by Alan Noble. Unfortunately, Hoopla only lets you rent the audiobook, so my thoughts are not as clear on it, but it has been really timely and insightful. Noble tries to tackle the problem of how to live out a faith in Jesus in a world that is constantly distracted, and how easy it is for Christians to treat our religion as just another hashtag in our identity. It is very challenging and somewhat academic, but I highly recommend it. It may not speak to you as much if you are not a Christian, but he cites a lot of non-Christian sources, and his example about how “non-religious” art can sometimes (most of the time) be a more sincere and beautiful evidence for the goodness and beauty of God than explicit religious art was validating.

Also re-reading East of Eden for the podcast (recorded our take on the first part!) It has been a real joy to get back into. As always happens with Steinbeck his style starts creeping into my writing. I'm trying to keep it in check, but it is hard. It never comes off as well because I do not have his mastery (yet?)

#april2024 #update

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Thank you for reading! To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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Living with Contentment

“I have lived with less than I need, and I have lived with more than I need. I have learned the secret of walking the road of life. Whether I am well-fed or hungry, whether I have more than I need or not enough.”

— Small Man to the Sacred Family in Village of Horses (Philippians 4:12 First Nations Version)

I have seen and heard the famous sequel to this verse used as a motivational statement so often that the context quoted above surprises me. Paul does not say “I can do all things through Christ” after listing his staggering achievements and hardships. Instead, “all things” in this context refers to literal things: his material needs. What can we learn from this during lent?

In America we should probably identify with Paul's statement about living with “more than I need,” but if we're being honest I think that many of us feel the opposite even if we live far above the poverty threshold. I know I do. My broken nature craves more and more without satisfaction, and the modern economy is built to take advantage of and stoke my greed. Last Christmas I decided I wanted a nice analog watch, so I innocently searched “best watches under fifty dollars.” I now have six watches, and while I have been responsible with my purchases, I still spent far more than I planned to, and I constantly find myself suppressing the urge to “research” more. This is a frivolous example, but it demonstrates how external greed can interact with our internal greed to trick us into discontentment even when we live in the richest nation on earth. And so insidious is our broken nature that we can view almost anything as a product. Whether it be what is on our wrists, the people we love, or the hobbies we find joy in, our selfish nature commodifies them so easily.

As Christians the need for contentment goes far beyond the life changing magic of tidying up. While the benefits of de-cluttering and buying less are important, they cannot exceed the benefits of contentment to our soul. Note that Paul has lived with more and less. His solution to the problem of discontentment and varying levels of material success goes beyond what is material and points to our savior, Jesus. How sweet the grace of God, that we can find rest for our souls no matter whether we are rich or poor! That we can look beyond our treasures to the Treasure of Eternal Life in Christ!

I wish I could say that I have been learning contentment through the discipline of giving up a material comfort during lent, but if anything, this lent season has brought more sharply into focus just how impossible it is to be content without Christ. Without my material comfort, there is less to distract me from the restlessness that I use the comfort to cover up. And yet it is also teaching me that contentment, much like fasting or abstinence, is a daily, hourly, minute by minute discipline. We cannot just decide to give something up, just like we cannot just decide to be content. We must endure the pain as we walk the road of life, depending on the grace of our savior Jesus, who gives us strength.

Read more about the First Nations Version of the New Testament here: https://firstnationsversion.com/book/first-nations-version/

#lent #reflection #contentment

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First, thank you for reading! To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

Patreon | Podcast | Mastodon | Twitter | Github

February actually felt like winter, both physically and spiritually. I felt like I was hunkering down and just surviving. Nothing extreme happened, but I just barely maintained a writing habit. This month is looking pretty busy as well, but I'm going to try and keep chipping away.

Writing

I am now at the end of any previous draft material, so it is exciting but also difficult to keep pushing. One page at a time though. I also wrote a lent reflection, which I will post on here after this. Subscribe if you want to read it!

Audiobook/Music

Work on the audiobook fell to the wayside. I'll get to it eventually. I've been playing more guitar and feeling some of the old amp/gear lust I felt in high school (I used to watch the proguitarshopdemo YouTube religiously). In the end though, a good guitarist can make almost anything sound good, and my gear is more than adequate. I've been transferring some tracks to audio.com, which will be the new home for my music. I'm kind of amazed that it exists, and really grateful for an ad-free, unlimited platform to share and collaborate on.

I also entered the TinyDesk concert for the first time. Thank you to my friend for encouraging me to do it. You can watch my entry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4jY1hLQ_sM

Podcast

I think we're coming out of hibernation. Hopefully you will hear something by the end of the month!

Reading/Listening

I read Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin and loved it. There is a great podcast in which Dr. Cornell West says that James Baldwin wants to be an honest man. He tells the painful truth with so much tenderness and passion, and the story of salvation and the struggle of faith resonated with my soul. John's (the main character's) conversion is some of the most visionary and powerful writing I have encountered.

For listening I enjoyed Son House, and also discovered Earl Hooker, who as far as I can tell is a criminally underrated blues guitarist. He has an effortless style and a great amount of restraint when playing, but the effect he achieves is really impressive. I found him because I was looking for some examples of slide playing in standard tuning, as I'd like to use the slide more.

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Here's a quote from Go Tell it on the Mountain:

“Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel's wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever — and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.

“Elisha?” he said.

“If you ask Him to bear you up,” said Elisha, as though he had read his [John's] thoughts, “He won't never let you fall.

“It was you,” he said, “wasn't it, Who prayed me through?”

“We was all praying, little brother,” said Elisa.”

#march #update #jamesbaldwin

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First, thank you for reading! To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

Patreon | Podcast | Mastodon | Twitter | Github