Hope-Kindling in Springtime

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Winter passed like melting snow. I stood on Stanage Edge in the Peak District of England, trying to think suitably noble thoughts*;  glimpsed the half-moon through snowy cherry blossoms; watched new leaves fill the woods with that soft, bright green; hunted for the tiny, gem-like wildflowers of bright blue, starry white, and deep purple that dot the grass; watched the bonfire dance as we celebrated the Resurrection at sunrise.

* In the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, Stanage Edge is the rocky outlook where Kiera Knightly stands and looks out at the horizon. It’s a good place to take pictures of yourself looking out at the horizon with a thoughtful expression.

As winter slipped away, I explored Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” with two different guests, examining the cold, perfect, deathliness of evil and the warm, healing vitality of goodness. I delved into the deep sorrow and even deeper hope of Job in connecting the Leviathan image with the sea dragon in the Scottish folk tale, “Aspittle and the Stoorworm.” I listened to C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and some of P.G. Wodehouse’s Joy in the Morning, reminding myself of the eternal beauty and wonder that sings outside of the computer screens, tax seasons, traffic lights, and other mundane pieces of everyday life. 

The creative dry spell I’ve been in for a while still continues, but I’ve started to have colorful dreams and daydreams of the stories I want to tell. Studying psalms like Psalm 36, with images like the Lord’s “river of delights,” as well as the sacred metaphors of the Gospel of John, make me yearn to write tales of wonder and hope: stories full of the goodness of the river of life, the garden of paradise, and the mountains of God. 

I’ve had a string of disappointments in trying out new books recently, but I’ve cheered myself up with some rereads. I can recommend these as hope-kindling as springtime: 

Nancy Guthrie’s Even Better than Eden – I read this last year after an exhausting work trip, and it brought me so much joy. Nancy Guthrie traces nine images from Genesis to Revelation, including the Wilderness and the Tree, and how the Lord Jesus’s atonement brings us a life that is even better than the Eden we lost. 

R.J. Anderson’s No Ordinary Fairy Tale and Flight and Flame trilogies (six books total) – I first encountered R.J. Anderson’s work through her beautiful science-fiction/fantasy Ultraviolet, and was thrilled to see she’d written more fantasy. Anderson’s vivid prose, stunningly vibrant characters, and exciting storylines explore what it means to be human, what good and evil look like, and what it means to love in fascinating ways. As a Bible teacher herself and an excellent storyteller, Anderson weaves British faerie lore and Cornish piskey-lore into gripping narratives that honor the great story of Scripture. If you start these books, set aside some extra time; they are almost impossible to put down.

Snowbound and Rainsodden: Books and Winter Weather

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Snowy hillside with withered red berries

It was so familiar: watching flakes fall from darkness to pale earth, spinning, a sight that will make you dizzy if you stare too long; the lightness of fresh, powdery snow underfoot; silver glitters in the new snowdrifts; paths trodden with iced-preserved footprints and pawprints; week-old snow frozen hard with subzero temperatures, too slick to walk on. I watched the snow highlight every branch and twig of the woods, like a white pencil outlining the sketch of dancers mid-motion, before the snow dropped off and left them gray and bare again. I felt the cold of negative temperatures, burning on the face and pulsing painfully in the fingertips, so fierce that returning to the 20s Fahrenheit felt balmy by comparison.

Nashville winters, someone told me, are usually “doom and gloom” – temperatures in the 30s and 40s with dark rainclouds. This past week, which shut down every major activity, would have been respectable in many northern states (except maybe Montana). I have dug deep snow tunnels in New Hampshire, driven on the ice rink of freezing rain in Maine, and watched ice turn trees into wonders of blown glass in Massachusetts, but I was not prepared for such weather here.

This part of winter is usually hard for me between the twinkling merriment of Christmas and the green of spring is so far away. Every year, I try to find ways to enjoy this season as cozy and romantic. It is, after all, a gift to be able to curl up in a soft blanket with a good book in hand and a candle burning, as the world sleeps outside.

Here are a few books I’m enjoying as warmer temperatures melt the snow:

All the Lost Places, by Amanda Dykes – I heard Amanda Dykes on several podcasts I follow and appreciated her thoughtful, gentle insights on writing and publishing. This book is a wonder. It has the eloquence and depth of the genre known as “literary fiction,” but instead of the despair I’ve encountered in other literary fiction books, it radiates hope and goodness. From the foggy streets of San Francisco to the glimmering canals and labyrinthine alleys of Venice, the book traces two lovable main characters whose stories are stitched together across time. Daniel of 1904 is bent under a load of guilt and shame; Sebastian of 1807 struggles to solve the riddle of his past and a stranger swept to his doorstep out of a storm. Discovering a new author who has published a stack of books is a rare delight, and I am excited to explore Amanda’s other stories.

A History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, by Henry Fielding – I read about this book in Karen Swallow Prior’s book, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books, in which she examines how works of fiction can teach us to understand and and practice virtue. She uses Tom Jones as an example of understanding prudence. I loved tracing the main character’s path from foolishness to prudence, recklessness to wisdom, and exile to home in this book. It’s very long, bawdier than I expected (think the cruder aspects of Shakespeare, and then step up a level), full of mock-epic moments and exaggerated references to classical myth, and does feature some significant wrongdoings by the hero. I caught myself saying out loud, “Tom, no, you dummy!” at various intervals. There are, however, realistic consequences for bad behavior, and a tone of love and understanding that makes me glad to have finished it.

Summer Lightning, by P.G. Wodehouse – I picked up this book to follow along with the “Close Reads” podcast. Wodehouse is new to me, and the ridiculous, overly complicated, earnest, and chaotic exploits of his characters are an absolute joy. Watching various people at a country house try to outdo each other in stealing things, impersonating other people, falling in love, making and breaking engagements, and sometimes outright blackmail, where no one really gets hurt and all good desires are fulfilled in the end, feels very safe in this uncertain world. 

The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis – For a few years now, I have stayed away from some of my most beloved series – the Chronicles of Narnia, the Harry Potter series, and The Lord of the Rings – because I wanted to forget them enough to come back and find them fresh and new. I decided to reread this book, my favorite Narnia book, because it’s a text for two online courses I’m taking: a medieval cosmology course by Kelly Cumbee and a creative writing course by Jonathan Rogers. I’m very familiar with the excellent radio drama version by Focus on the Family, but this time, I listened to this audiobook version by Jeremy Northam, which was wonderful. Each book in the series has a different reader, including Kenneth Branagh for The Magician’s Nephew and Patrick Stewart for The Last Battle. 

I love The Silver Chair so much. I deeply identify with Jill’s struggle to obey Aslan; I love the perilous wanderings across the wild north; I burst out laughing multiple times at Puddleglum’s cheerfully dour sayings. Best of all, Jeremy Northam’s voice for the audiobook emphasized the kindly humor of C.S. Lewis’s prose asides in the text – those thoughtful, sympathetic comments about how you feel in certain situations, like sitting by the fire late at night, too tired to do the hard work of going to bed.


Now that Nashville’s dark rainclouds have returned and melted the snow, I can go on walks again, slipping in the mud and letting raindrops slip through my hair. I don’t think I’ll ever fully enjoy this time of year, but I can appreciate the grim, quiet, atmospheric beauty of wild winds, stormy skies, and steady rain.

2023: The Close of the Year

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Glittering ice storms and whimsical thaws and freezes; tiny white and purple wildflowers that sang like stars in the grass; a sweltering green summer full of dreams of dragons; a humming haze of an autumn, goldenrod and woodsmoke in the air. Playing the how-many-ebooks-can-I-check-out-per-month game on library apps; slipping into chiffon and satin for weddings; watching my dog roll around on his back like a deliriously happy bug; zipping up suitcases and carefully storing away parking tickets; sifting the pages of my Bible as if I climbed a stone staircase, trusting it to hold me. 2023 is finished – a translucent, winding, treacherous, wondrous year that taught me a lot of good things.

I wanted this to be a fruitful, abundant year, especially for my writing career. I resolved to edit the rough draft of a manuscript I’d just finished, submit at least one article for publication per month, release a fairy-tale-retelling podcast, and perhaps craft a few short stories for good measure – along with at least one blog post per month, of course. I accomplished a couple of those things, especially releasing the podcast, but for most of the time I found my heart and imagination blank and empty, unable to give birth to new ideas. 

At a writing retreat in February, my writing teacher reminded us that we writers are not machines with a set, predetermined production output. We’re more like trees, with seasons of fruitfulness and fallowness. I decided to fill myself up with good things in this fallow season, so when inspiration comes, it has plenty to work with: good books, good plays, good movies, and good teaching.

This blog post is a wrapup of some of the good things I filled up with in 2023, books and plays, as well as a few aftershow notes from recent “Leaf by Lantern” podcast episodes. 

Books of 2023

Researching the podcast this year kept me steeped in fairy tales, but I fed my soul with all the other books I could find. Here are some of my favorites:

Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince, by Megan Morrison – I wanted to read more fairy tale retellings so I could talk about them on the podcast, but I had trouble finding ones that weren’t dark, “steamy” YA fiction. Reading this story gave me a lot of pleasure during a long flight from the west coast. It’s actually the third in the Land of Tyme series (I have not read the first two) and features a brilliantly-developed, selfish and demanding main character who goes on a quest, solves a complex mystery, and undergoes a deep transformation.

This Rough Magic and Nine Coaches Waiting, by Mary Stewart – Despite the announcement on the covers of these paperbacks that these titles graced the New York Times Bestseller List (in the 1950s) and that Mary Stewart is famous as a master of “romantic suspense,” I had never heard of this author before. I could die of happiness. These books feature beautiful, daring heroines reminiscent of Grace Livingstone Hill girls or Nancy Drew; exotic locations described with lush, vivid prose (I adore detailed descriptions like these); thrilling adventures and wildly melodramatic romances. These books are definitely dated in certain ways, but they whisked me away to enchanted worlds for many happy hours. I would love to write books like these, set in places I know and love.

The Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson – I crave new, well-written mysteries, but it’s hard to find good ones outside of the Golden Age classics I have already reread many times (mainly Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers) that don’t feature grisly murders and questionable ethics. This middle-grade novel uses some of the classic tropes, including a housebound main character (suffering from crippling germophobia) who may have been the last person to see a toddler who goes missing. It’s a very sweet story, with a lot of self-discovery and friendship.

Ancora: The Fog Banshee’s Curse, Miriam Pittman – I met Miriam at a writer’s retreat and loved the sound of her Irish-lore-inspired story. This book overflows with sweet humor, beauty, adventure, and mystery, from a sinister spellcaster to magical horses and terrifying, murderous fog banshees. The personalities and relationships of the sisters are as clear, bright, and sweet as those in Little Women or The Penderwicks. Miriam did a fantastic job of playing chords of truth, self-discovery, repentance, courage, justice, and forgiveness in ways that ring true, without making the reader feel lectured.

Daughter of Arden series by Loren Warnemuende – After twenty-five years of writing and drafting and a few years of editing and review, my friend Loren’s book series is finally out! Watching Loren brainstorm and draft and piece the final parts together has been a delight. Loren is a master of character development and growth – I was astonished at the transformations she put together. Reading the final book, Promise, was also a lesson in revelation and exposition; many of the characters, events, and seemingly-extraneous details of the first two books suddenly rise up as essential plot points that lead to a thrilling conclusion.

The Carver and the Queen by Emma C. Fox – Before reading this book, I thought Siberia was a perfectly flat, frigid, depressing place with a constant snowstorm over grim gulags. Emma’s box opens up the dazzling world of Siberian folklore, from peasant festivals to fireflowers to a formidable Malachite Queen under the mountain. The prose of this book was so exquisite, I had to read and reread pages to soak it in. Deep, fascinating characters – some very lovable good guys, some very hateable bad guys – take part in a dance of duty and desire, frustrated longings and difficult sacrifices. I am a fast reader because I’m impatient, but this is a rare treasure, a story to savor slowly.

Son of the Deep and Orion and the Starborn by K.B. Hoyle – Emma’s The Carver and the Queen led me to Owl’s Nest Publishers, a great place to find middle-grade and teen literature that is actually written for readers in those age groups. This fairytale retelling and astronomical fantasy gave me a wholehearted pleasure – gorgeous settings in the deep sea or Orion’s belt, characters with zeal and longing, and, best of all, plots driven by romantic or familial love. I ached for the main characters in these books to find the wealth of community and keys to the mysteries in their lives. Both of these titles have sequels coming out in the next year, which makes me very, very happy.

Tales of Hibaria: The Awakening by Jamin Still – I wanted this book as soon as I heard its premise – a world where constellations or “Sky Lords” walk the earth and guide children on important quests – but I waited until I could ask for it as an early Christmas present. It’s marvelous: gorgeously illustrated, with intricate and colorful maps and breathtaking images of the stories; written with simple, eloquent prose like drops of rainwater on a pool; alive with child characters who look up to the stars, ponder strange memories or deep griefs, and set foot on the road to adventure with trembling hearts. Some of the short stories in this collection were so beautiful they hurt. My timing in reading it is excellent – this book’s sequel also comes out this year. 

The Turning by Emily Whitman – With delightful irony, I published a podcast episode on the “Selkie Wife” folktale one day, couldn’t sleep that night, and checked out this ebook on my library app to pass the time . . . which turned out to be a selkie story! Vivid, clear prose; a main character whose loneliness, love, and determination captured my heart completely; and a perfect balance between the discouragement of frustrated desire and choosing to hope. 

Personal reflection about all these books: the stories I loved the most in 2023 involved characters with profound yearnings, deep love, exciting adventures, and courageous hope. It has been fun to trace the Gospel patterns in the fairy tales I’ve studied on the podcast, looking for what truths of Scripture glimmer in motifs, archetypes, and structure and give them their beauty.

Plays of 2023

I attended every play I could find this year, mostly classics: 

  • Les Miserables, January
  • Peter and the Starcatchers, March
  • Pride and Prejudice, April
  • The Sound of Music, July
  • The Play that Goes Wrong, November
  • A Wrinkle in Time, November
  • A Christmas Carol, December

The Play That Goes Wrong – This performance matched my sense of humor perfectly (almost): consciously and unconsciously ridiculous, full of desperate attempts to save face and keep the show going on in the midst of abject failure and total mayhem. If you’re not familiar, the premise is that you’re attending an amateur drama club’s first major performance . . . and everything goes drastically, hilariously wrong, from actors forgetting their lines to the set falling apart. Watching this play reminded me of how much comedy, and storytelling in general, depends on the interplay of timing, setting audience expectations, and either meeting or breaking those expectations. The misspoken or forgotten lines were placed so that the audience knew what was supposed to be said, and how bad the actual delivery was; props were misplaced or forgotten in a specific order, so we knew specifically what should have happened. I could have used less (or no) slapstick fighting at the end, but otherwise, thoroughly enjoyed the artful silliness of this play.

A Wrinkle in Time – Fifteen cast members in a black box theatre brought this story to life – with some people acting and an ensemble taking turns reading out loud and playing minor roles. The wonder, humor, and startling creativity of L’Engle’s work was all the more delightful as an audiobook/live drama. Adapting a story to the stage or screen often means that the author’s prose is lost, or has to be inserted into dialogue, but the read-aloud aspect of this adaptation meant L’Engle’s prose was preserved and its beauty was amplified. I also appreciated that the play didn’t feel the need to update or change the story to “fit” our current cultural moment better; it was more timeless because it wasn’t trying to be relevant. 

Podcasts of 2023

One morning in May, as I was frantically trying to write/record the first episode and get all the necessary ingredients (show graphic + RSS feed + intro segment + etc.) I woke up feeling grumpy and unmotivated, wondering why on earth I was trying to do something as hard and scary as produce a podcast. I didn’t want to – it was too difficult and too intimidating. With a startling clarity, I realized that those two things, fear and laziness, are terrible reasons for doing or not doing something – and I managed to publish the episode a few days later.

Creating podcast episodes is much harder than writing essays or stories. A few things I’ve learned: 

  • Time – I have never regretted giving myself an extra day or so to refine the content, even when it means an episode is late. I’m careful about theological topics and Scriptural interpretations, and reading a script out loud multiple times gives me the chance to realize if I say something confusing or incorrect. 
  • Examples – Finding good, interesting examples of principles and applications is one of my favorite things – and one of the hardest parts of the podcast. Talking about any subject means that you have to be well-versed in it, in both breadth and depth – so technically, I should be a master reader of retellings. One problem I’ve encountered, as I mentioned above, is the rarity of good fairy tale retellings. There are gems out there, but there are a lot of retellings that try to “fix” the fairy tales or use them to teach moral lessons. Finding good retellings, or stories in general, is deeply refreshing and gives me hope.
  • Community – Good podcasts make themselves part of larger conversations, whether or not they have one host or several. I have learned so much from the guests I’ve had on the podcast, and would like to learn more. I hope to book more guests for season 3.

Reflections on some recent podcasts: 

The Golden Bird

This episode explored some very big and deep concepts, and I wish I had given myself a little more time to ponder them. I would add one thing to the third section, in which I discussed Scriptural examples of betrayal. I went over three Biblical stories of betrayal and how they provide patterns artists could learn from: Joseph and his brothers (betrayal > repentance > forgiveness and reconciliation), Cain and Abel (betrayal > no repentance > unexpected grace), and Judas Iscariot (betrayal > no repentance > condemnation). With further reflection, I wish I had talked more about the concept of betrayal and the Christian worldview. 

The idea of “betrayal” as something bad, a wrong that demands justice, is a Christian one. It rests on several things: 

  • The idea that to break your word, your promise, is wrong – words matter to God. God always keeps His Word. This principle also applies to lying (Ten Commandments).
  • The idea that hurting someone intentionally, not in self-defense or a just war, is wrong. “Love your neighbor” – Jesus commanded – and even, love your enemy. 
  • The idea that there is no sin that will not be found out. I don’t watch a lot of gritty TV shows – cop shows or the darker dystopias – but I’ve noticed in the few I have seen that there comes a moment when a situation becomes so tangled, so full of conflicting wills, wrongs, desires, and dangers, that even the good or sympathetic characters will do terrible things. In moral gray areas, it’s not always clear if there is a right thing to do. Scripture opens our eyes to a world in which God is always watching and always good; He sees every act of evil, and He will bring justice. Applied artistically, I believe that if you have a betrayal in your story, you need to figure out how justice will manifest itself, whether or not the betrayer is caught or the betrayed person survives. I don’t believe a story should display the betrayal of an innocent person without there being some justice – or at least, the shadow of some future reckoning. 

I also spoke a little on the four rivers of Eden (in relation to Havilah and the land of gold). Andy Patton’s meditation on the four rivers of Eden examines the Hebrew words and Old Testament imagery more closely, with some delightful insights. 

The Selkie Wife

This episode became one of my favorites; exploring the paradox of the sea as a realm of wonder and chaos was especially fun. I realized, in the making, that I failed to make an important distinction between the sea in the beginning of Genesis and the sea after Genesis 3. The sea is fallen, with the rest of Creation; the presence of sin and death mean that the ocean we encounter now, physically and metaphorically, is a corrupt version of the ocean God made. That being said, I love how this tragic tale captures the loveliness, loneliness, longing, and liminality of sea stories. 

The Frog Prince

I had lots of fun planning and recording this sci-fi episode with my dad. Envisioning what a sci-fi retelling of the Frog Prince might look like allowed us to delve into our favorite themes in science fiction, the imagery of transformation, friendship, and quests, and how to make characters likable, relatable, and able to grow. 

This episode reveals that I’m more of a plotter than a pantser, to use current creative-writing jargon – I like to have some overall picture of the plot in my head. The distinction with my writing brain is that I’m a holey plotter; I’ll have a general structure in my head and a certain number of scenes, but with big narrative gaps that I have to fill in. If I were to write a sci-fi Frog Prince retelling, the filling in of those holes and editing process would probably change the entire story. But it was fun to envision how a story like this could begin. 

Looking into 2024

I’m looking forward to 2024; a year with a nice, round number, a year four years removed from certain health-related events we would all like to forget; a year that, at this moment, is untouched by shadows. Every year, since college, has brought such life changes and unique seasons that I could never guess them all, from December to December – so for all the unknowns of 2024, I will trust what I know:

Psalm 36:7 — How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

The Long Song of Autumn

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Crimson fern leaves and nodding goldenrod; long hours of screen time revived by long readings in the Gospel of John; car repairs and apartment deep-cleaning; Zoom discussions of Tolkien’s stories and scholarship; blinking stop lights and noisy waiting rooms; hours spent curled up with adventure, fantasy, and fairy tale books as the dusk deepens. Autumn is passing slowly and swiftly, like the lingering end of a folk song.

Junius Johnson’s dragon course this summer was just as refreshing and joyful as I had hoped. Rereading old friends like The Hobbit, The Hero and the Crown, and The Neverending Story and discovering new treasures felt like inviting my childhood self to walk beside me and remind me of forgotten dreams. As the summer heat shimmers away and the tree canopy blazes gold and saffron, I have done my best to keep feeding my soul with tales of mystery and wonder-stories that remind me of the great and wild things underneath chores like brake replacements and insurance paperwork, like gold glinting through dead leaves. Some favorites included:

  • Emma Fox’s The Carver and the Queen
  • K.B. Hoyle’s Son of the Deep
  • Mary Stewart’s Nine Coaches Waiting and This Rough Magic
  • Miriam Pittman’s Ancora: The Fog Banshee’s Curse

Much of my free time has gone into season 2 of the Leaf by Lantern podcast. Season 1 was a flurry of writing and rewriting, trying to temper perfectionism with common sense, reading and trying to give myself enough time to ponder before publishing any thoughts. I am trying to make Season 2 a series of richer, deeper episodes – a slow wander rather than a mad dash.

Here are some notes on recent episodes:

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Apparently, I can’t keep away from Search for the Lost Husband stories (ATU 425 in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folklore index)*. I remember picking up a folklore anthology that bore this title from our childhood library and staring at the title printed on a pale blue background.

“Dad, what does this mean?” I asked him, showing him the book.

“Hmm,” he said. I have a vague memory of him gently explaining that compass directions don’t apply to things in space like the sun and moon. I never forgot this fairy tale, and loved it all the more when I read Jessica Day George’s gorgeous retelling, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow. George’s retelling explores more of the background of the villain and makes the whole thing into an almost-gothic mystery, with a slow trickle of clues and revelations. This episode gave me a chance to explore the mystical, lonely, wistful Northerness of this variant and how an artist could create a rich atmosphere in a retelling.

* Every single time I read or type “Aarne-Thompson-Uther”, my mind jumps to Uther Pendragon, the father of King Arthur. There’s no actual relation. The “Uther” named in the index is Hans-Jörg Uther, a German scholar who refined the already-published work of Aarne and Thompson in 2004. He might appreciate the confusion. Then again, I don’t think Uther Pendragon is a very noble character, so maybe not.

The Little Mermaid with K.C. Ireton

Every overview of the history of fairy tales and folklore I’ve read takes a big breath and pause at Hans Christian Andersen. His renown is stunning; “The Little Mermaid,” “The Snow Queen,” “The Nightingale,” and others are as well known as “Cinderella” (at least, in the Western world). I haven’t read much of his biography, but I’ve seen some scholars assign facts from his life to his stories, as if his personal history is the only way to understand his artwork. “He wrote [this tale] because [biographical fact]” – and nothing more. A person’s life certainly influences their fiction, but I don’t like the reductionism of a tidy “this = that” statement as an explanation for stories with such haunting images and structural intricacy.

My discussion with K.C. (Kimberlee) Ireton gave me hope for Andersen scholarship. Her joyful, thought-provoking theological reading of the tale helped me understand why it strikes such chords in my soul – especially as the ending of “The Little Mermaid” is not quite the happy ending you expect. I’ve been dreaming up merfolk stories ever since.

Fieldmoot Conference Presentation: “She is the Morning”

In between planning this podcast season in September, I wrote and recorded a video on another fairy tale for the online Fieldmoot conference, which is scheduled to go live starting Thursday, November 2 at 6:30 pm through Sunday, November 5. The conference’s theme is “Light and Darkness,” so I chose a fairy tale I thought had some interesting light/darkness images: “The Singing, Soaring Lark” from the Grimm collection. This tale is a variant of “Beauty and the Beast” that was new to me. It’s a lovely quest tale with a courageous, warmhearted heroine and beautiful images, including larks, lions, griffins, dragons, the sun and moon, and a mysterious nut-tree. I had a lot of fun investigating things like bird imagery in the Bible, the physics of green wood, and the theology of recognition, though I had to leave a lot of research paths untaken to keep within a reasonable time limit.

I didn’t have time to mention it in the recorded video, but if you like the fairy tale, there is a picture book adaptation called The Lady and the Lion by Jacqueline Ogburn and Laurel Long. The illustrations are some of the loveliest I’ve ever seen.

The Fieldmoot conference uses Discord to keep a live chat as the recorded videos play. It was a cheerful, thoughtful, kind, and delightfully mischievous group of people last year commenting on the sessions and recommending books to each other. I hope we have the same friendly atmosphere this year. We’ll also have live Q&As after the recorded video sessions, so I’m curious to see what questions and comments people have.

Sign up here if you plan to attend! The organizers have done an unbelievably great job of strategizing, scheduling, innovating, and covering the multitude of details an event like this requires, and signing up helps them plan.

2023 became the year of fairy tales and fairy tale retellings for me. I have dreams of pursuing other research interests, including detective stories, travel adventures, light sci-fi, and maybe historical fiction, but I hope that the world of fairy tale images will illuminate all these future creative pursuits. Studying quests and towers, glass hills and magic wells, rescues and resurrections have helped me love the Great Story of the gospel all the more – the news that gives all our pursuits, from the highest delights to the most miserable chores, a meaning and a happy ending.

The Second Summer

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My second summer in Tennessee really has felt like paradise: golden hour tickling the dark green, feathery leaves of the honey locust trees; a writer’s retreat centered on the theme of music; dewdrops twinkling in the grass; triumphal teaching on the book of Acts; fireflies gleaming in the sweet, cool air after a thunderstorm; an online course on dragons that is filling my mind with insights and my heart with wonder. 

It is also sweet to be fulfilling the dream of several years, starting a podcast. It is harder than I thought it would be to record my voice and send it out into the world. Hearing my own attempts to balance vocal projection, enthusiasm, calm, and proper enunciation feels like studying my face in a mirror for an uncomfortably long time. It is fun, though, to present my own writing in a new medium, a form that is more embodied and more vulnerable than text on a page. 

The brand-new project is still flittering its frail wings and trying to comprehend gravity, but just launching it has taught me a few things: to not try to edit to perfection (it’s a good way to drive yourself mad); to do things the messy way at first, like Googling “how to put your podcast on Spotify” and cushioning my microphone with pillows; to enjoy the way that a podcast opens fascinating discussions with close family and friends.

In between Scriptural word-studies on darkness and frost, puzzling over texts like Vladimir Propp’s venerable Morphology of the Folktale, rereading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Hobbit, giggling over a P.G. Wodehouse audiobook as I water my plants, and basking in the sun to erase my flip-flop tan, I have been trying to write stories again. After a year of settling in a new place and trying to build a life, somehow, writing is harder rather than easier. It is a perilous, vulnerable, precious thing to try to call a world to life with words; shape believable, complex characters; set a rhythm of exposition, action, and dialogue that summons readers into the waking dream of narrative. 

A sweet and wise writer at the recent writer’s retreat told me that she is trying to write primarily for herself, for joy, first, before worrying about pleasing an audience. I am trying to have the courage to imitate her in that – to refresh my spirit with good, profound, beautiful things, and then use them to sing a new song. 

Leaf by Lantern – Latest Podcast Episodes

Episode 3: The Black Bull of Norroway

I had a lot of fun putting this episode together. The episode examines how a Christian artist could interpret or use the images of the unexpected call, the black bull, the wandering in the wilderness, and the glass hill from this fairy tale. 

Things I forgot or didn’t have room to mention in the episode (these will make more sense if you’ve already listened to it): 

  • I think the image of the black bull, a figure who is mysterious and scary at first but turns out to be good and kind, has some symbolic links to the idea of “holy darkness” that C.S. Lewis explores in his own fairy tale retelling, Till We Have Faces. I may do a podcast episode on that book later.
  • There are so many fascinating images in this tale I didn’t cover: the apple, pear, and plum given to the heroine that contain fabulous jewelry; the strange part of the tale when the sky turns red if the battle goes ill and blue if it goes well; the washing of the blood-stained shirt. I could have gone into themes of communion, provision, prophecy, sanctification, and recognition here – but to avoid making the episode too long or oversaturated with content, I had to focus on my favorite images.
  • In my own version of the tale, the one I read aloud at the beginning, I chose to have the prince say “At last!” when he sees the main character, his true bride. This phrase is an echo of Adam’s exclamation when he first sees Eve.

Episode 4: Maid Maleen with Loren G. Warnemuende

My friend Loren and I talk about her retelling of “Maid Maleen” – a trilogy called “Daughter of Arden.” We talked about the first book, “Exile,” and how Loren chose to interpret the father figure, the princess, the tower, and the garden. I also threw in a question about fancy dresses, since I have come to believe those are a crucial aspect of fairy tale retellings. 

  • You can order a copy of Exile here and Wandering here.
  • See Loren’s website for information more about her and her work.

Leaf by Lantern: The Drama of Launching a Podcast

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Leaf by Lantern podcast show cover: a leaf illuminated by a lantern
Cover art designed by Clare and Evie Warnemuende

Five years ago, I had a long-ish commute to my job: about 50 minutes. I drove past long stretches of woodland that turned golden-green, fiery red and orange, silver-green, and gray throughout that year; tiny grave plots on lonely hillsides; fields of long grass and cattails rustling in the wind; red barns and grazing horses. I knew every highway exit and every pothole. I desperately wanted to fill up my mind with good things for the empty hours of computer work, so I listened to a lot of podcasts.

As I listened to a steady stream of news, artistic musings, entrepreneurial advice, motivational tips, and other eclectic content, I dreamed of starting my own podcast. “Dreamers in Dull Jobs” or “CommuterPlay,” I imagined as the title: “a podcast for the thoughtful office worker.” The list of ideas on my phone had topics like essays by G.K. Chesterton (thrilling and hilarious and as comforting as a hearth fire in a pub in winter) and the poetry of Robert Frost (bright and intricate as a snowflake). The topics would be exciting, fascinating, transcendent things that would fill commuters with hope and wonder as they drove cars, rode subways, or walked into drab office buildings: constellation mythology, metaphysical conceits, detective stories, legends of the sea. I wanted to give other people the soul-food I needed.

I knew, however, that I had very little to talk about on a podcast. So I waited.

Years of continued commuting; moving; COVID; grad school in Scotland; more moving and settling; reading, dreaming, thinking, healing, growing. There was never a perfect time to do it, and the obstacles – the intimidation of actually recording my voice and sending it into the world, as well as the hard work and technical demands – always loomed. But I decided to try it this summer.

As Tennessee grew green and gold and steamy with humidity, with crimson wild strawberries in the grass, white and yellow honeysuckle in the woods, the rubber-band thwang of the bull frog in the pond, and deer stepping lightly in the shadows, I wrote and researched. It is a lot harder to write a podcast script than I thought, especially since I have the tendency to ramble, with plenty of “um”s, “ah”s, and (my particular vice) “so”s. But my researching and pondering has led me to some beautiful things.

The Podcast’s Topic

The first episode explains the topic and scope more fully, but in summary, I chose “fairy tale retellings in the light of Scripture” as the topic. I love fairy tales and want to write fairy tale retellings myself, so this is a rich, plentiful subject area to work in. As my approach or angle of perspective, I chose to use Scripture as my interpretive framework or lens for truth and beauty. I will look to the Bible as the sourcebook for how a fairy tale retelling should approach good and evil, sin and grace, quests and spells, impossible tasks and glass slippers and castles swallowed in briar-roses. Referencing Scripture this way has led to me to research some fascinating questions, such as “what role does glass (the material) play in Scripture?” and “how does Scripture portray sisterhood or brotherhood?”

The Podcast’s Format

Podcasts that are conversational and tell stories are my favorites. I plan to have as many guests as I can, but as that requires a lot of planning, I have a mix of guest and solo episodes. Because it’s harder to listen to one person’s voice for a long time, I am keeping the solo episodes short – no more than 30 minutes or so.

I will open by reading aloud a particular fairy tale, and then discussing how an artist can approach specific ethical issues and images like the helpful fox or the candy house by referencing Scripture.

The Podcast’s Name and Art

Naming things has never been my strength. After some anguished brainstorming, self-doubt, and wavering, I asked for help. A lovely writer-friend, Reagan Dregge, came up with a beautiful one: “Leaf by Lantern.” The name is a nod to J.R.R. Tolkien’s story, “Leaf by Niggle,” and his concept of the canon of folklore as “The Tree of Tales.” I wanted to make it clear that Scripture is the eternal, transcendent, God-breathed work, and fairy tales are beautiful but man-made and therefore fallible. The idea is that Scripture is the lantern (Psalm 119:105) for the Tree of Tales, helping us distinguish truth from lies and appreciate beauty all the more. Two excellent artists, Clare and Evie Warnemuende, created the exquisite show cover art for me, saving everyone from the dreadful results of me attempting to do so on my own using Paint.

I hope this podcast accomplishes at least one goal: reminding people of the goodness of the Great Story, the true Fairy tale, the God who “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” It has already done so for me.

Access the podcast here, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

A Winter of Prophecy, Story, and Hearthfire

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Winter in Tennessee has been a season of stark contrasts and startling shifts. We’ve had days clear and frigid enough to burst pipes; days of mellow sunlight and fresh breezes; days dark enough to light flickering candles; days of sharp sleet or glittering frost. Black buzzards circle above the hills; squirrels bustle in the bare trees, whisking their tails; golden daffodils and green leaf buds unfold in the woods. 

This is an awkward time of year, meteorologically and culturally. The merriment and busyness of Christmas, New Year, and Epiphany pass away into January that can be fresh and quiet and still – or dreary and dull and lonely. In February, the crimson, heart-shaped candy boxes and pink balloons that appear in Walmart are not a pleasant sight for everyone.

I expected a gray and sluggish January and early February. Instead, I found myself in a whirlwind of good, fascinating, exhausting things: 

The Lion on the Mountain: Studying Exegesis through Amos

A few weeks ago, I attended a Bible-teaching workshop that illuminated God’s leonine majesty and abundant mercy in the Book of Amos. The workshop focused on the practice of Scriptural exegesis, or drawing meaning out of the text rather than using it as a platform for your own assumptions. It was humbling and awe-inspiring. We learned more about determining contexts, stepping into the dusty world of the first audience; identifying the bones of structure to find the author’s points of emphasis; seeing the glimmers of gospel justice, mercy, sin, and grace in a particular passage; tuning your interpretation of the promises, warnings, and principles of the text to the ears of a modern audience. 

I felt, as I have never felt before, how much help we believers have in understanding the nature and will of God. The text itself leads you by the hand; the Holy Spirit overshadows you; the church walks beside you. The book of Amos uses multiple literary techniques to press its message on our hearts: the concrete images of a lion roaring, threshing sledges and plumb lines, summer fruit and mountains dripping with sweet wine; the repetition and rhythm of poetic lines; the command of imperatives, forceful verbs, and evocative nouns to call Israel to repentance. The very fierceness of the warnings testifies to the fierceness of divine love.

The workshop reminded me to listen, and listen wisely. Listen to the voice of God in His Word, the Spirit, and the true Church, and measure the trustworthiness of all other voices – family or friend, influencer or news source – by its integrity to His plumb line of truth. 

Goodness in Story and Song

It has been a month of stories. A few weeks ago, I sat in a high balcony seat with a partly-obstructed view and watched an incredible cast singing of candlesticks and barricades, rain, stars, black and red, love, grace, suffering, and heaven-longing in a performance of Les Miserables. At home, I’ve been delighting in the sonorous images of gold rings, glass hills, nightingales, wells, fawns, and ravens in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which I have never read all the way through. 

For a book study, I’ve explored a narrative of ravenous swamps, a light twinkling through the fields, a terrible burden, and a shining city in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. As part of that study, I’m researching the mysterious, controversial, oft-misunderstood wayfarers known as the Puritans. There is so much to read and know about them, but in my research so far, they are defined by zeal: passion, earnestness, ardor, sincerity, boldness, perseverance, and painstaking care in all they did. 

These stories inspire and intimidate me as a storyteller. As an artist and a person, I want to be known for zeal, for gentleness, and for excellent craftsmanship: for creating story-worlds that resonate because they testify to the truth without being preachy or simplistic. Somehow, despite being extremely and unapologetically preachy, and using a form criticized for its simplicity – allegory – John Bunyan created a story that has shaped thousands of imaginations for more than three centuries. Les Miserables and Grimm’s Fairy Tales also meditate on justice, goodness, mercy, honor, and self-sacrifice in plain prose as well as poetic images. I hope I can learn to write well enough to write tales of goodness and wisdom, joy and courage without oversimplifying or making truth seem boring.

Hearth Fires and Hospitality 

Last weekend, I held an 80,000-word manuscript in my hands – my own manuscript, my own work, the first novel-length writing I have actually finished. A friend lovingly printed the copy for me. We sat in a room full of laughter, stories, and the smell of hot apple cider and woodsmoke at a writer’s retreat.

The weekend gave me much to reflect on in the mystery of hospitality and fellowship. Since childhood, I’ve struggled to understand how the deep friendships portrayed in books like The Lord of the Rings are hard to establish in real life. We all crave intimacy, to be welcomed into cozy rooms and laughing circles, but it is so difficult to find. Learning and remembering people’s names; asking the right questions; drawing out the quiet people or launching into a monologue to give them a break; introducing people to each other; setting up board games, walks, meals, or other gatherings; asking “how are you?” casually or seriously; it is all a dance, a pattern of wit and discernment and perseverance and sometimes chance. It is so delicate, but worth every careful step and cautious leap. 


All this winter busyness was good – beautiful, encouraging, and thought-provoking. It has also been exhausting. After years of seeking good things like fellowship, adventure, and opportunities, I have to remind myself that I need to seek rest, too. Maybe that’s why February is gray – not just the gray of drabness, but the gray of quiet. 

A New Song: Winter Pages for the Holiday Season

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Red ornament on a street at night


Sing to the LORD a new song,
his praise from the end of the earth,
you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it,
the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Isaiah 42:10 (ESV)

This past November, I tried the Poem-a-Day challenge for the first time. I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) last year, churning out 1600+ words a day with a purring cat in my lap and a woodsmoke-scented candle perfuming the room. The challenge was a forge for my imagination, refining but painful. I wasn’t sure I could do it again. But one poem a day? If I tossed meter and rhyme and extensive revisions out the window, I could do that. 

The Poetry Pub’s prompts were magical. I struggled with some of them, especially “syzygy,” but I rediscovered an old pleasure with the hardest ones. The mental wrestling required to make an image work, to tie the first and lines together back to the same idea, and to make the last line of a poem ring like struck crystal, gave me a thrill I had forgotten. I glimpsed connections between memories, ideas, and stories I had never seen before – relationships and geometry, conversations and pottery, cold wood stoves and loneliness, staircases and nostalgia. I remembered the joyful labor to sing a new song.

Most of my poems were too messy or too personal to share here, but this one is my favorite:

Theme: Currents

Fall Semester, 2016

The awful responsibility of Time, 
My Southern Lit professor intoned
With the resonance of a great brass bell.
The west wind rustled crimson leaves across campus.
Flocks of absentee ballots launched from the mailroom.

What if time is a pool and not a river? I wrote, 
Hazelnut coffee in hand, looking out the window,
Where afternoon gilded the red brick archway
Over the ebb and flow of class times and mealtimes.

Wolf Creek! Wolf Creek! The frequent chant: 
A parade of friends carrying the newly-engaged to the river
To throw them, laughing, into the current of days.

 “A poem is judged by its last line,” my British literature professor told us in my freshmen year. “A good poem has a good ending.” Messy as this poem is, I was proud of that last line. 

The current of days has carried November away, and we are in Advent again. This year, a writer-friend named Reagan Dregge and I are approaching winter with a new creative collaboration: a letter subscription with a matching website centered on the theme of rest, stillness, and abiding. It’s called Winter Pages, and the first few contributions have already given me the refreshment of delight.

November’s Poem-a-Day challenge was, unexpectedly, excellent preparation for Advent and the Winter Pages project. Pounding out a poem a day – raw, rough-edged, and unglazed – forced me to see fresh wonders, intricate complexities, and startling relationships. Similes served as intricate bridges between memories, dreams, ideas, and longings; metaphors were copper mirrors that recast the world in mesmerizing shades; alliteration chimed cheerfully; the few formal styles I tried, including a villanelle, were crucibles which forced me to bend my words into beautiful shapes. Poetry forced me to see and make things with new eyes. 

In the same way, the artists participating in the Winter Pages project are helping renew my sight, restoring and re-illuminating the colors and textures of the ancient story. Reagan Dregge’s introduction and musings on green and gold and shades of gray gave me the coziness of the winter prairie in Minnesota and reminded me of our eversummer hope. Tyler Rogness’s description of an ensnowed maple tree recaptures the waiting and Resurrection that Christmastide looks forward to. Jaclyn Hoselton’s meditation on Mary’s Magnificat emphasizes the breathless wonder of Gabriel’s message and Mary’s creative response. Joy Manning’s poem re-tuned me to the unutterable longing and endless beauty of starlight. Sara Bannerman and Margaret Bush’s playlists invite me into the ministry of music, which can weave celebration, lament, suffering, and hope into beauty. More contributions are coming – ponderings on joy, solace, and seeking.

The last Poem-a-Day prompt, November 30’s, was “You, Too?” The idea comes from C.S. Lewis’s Four Loves, where he says, “The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” (Chapter on Friendship, pg. 83). Happy but exhausted from the feasting and travel of Thanksgiving, I was too tired to come up with a poem for that one. It has been a year of solitary drives, new faces and known ones, deep conversations, laughter, and long silences, but not many of those fresh “you, too?” moments. 

But then I realized: working with other artists to honor the “still point of this turning world” (to steal from T.S. Eliot), a refuge of quiet in this busy season, is a better expression of that magical “you, too?” than any poem I could have manufactured to fit that theme. I am only one of many who are trying to sing a new song.

Hutchmoot 2022 and the Many Selves of Memory

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Sunset with colorful leaves


Bring a memory you want to write about. 

The writing seminar’s theme was “Personal Narrative” – memoir, creative nonfiction, telling your own story. Jonathan Rogers, my writing teacher, held it just before the Hutchmoot Conference of 2022 – a faith and arts conference that I’ve dreamed about going to since 2018. 

A memory I wanted to write about . . . fresh out of college in 2017, eager to finally begin my career as a creative writer, I listed memories and experiences in a spiral-bound notebook. Our magical trip to Hawaii when I was nine; summers backpacking in Yosemite; sunscreen-and-ice-cream days by the lake; the cross-country road trip west along I-40 after graduation. I had pillaged a lot of these for my writing already, and I don’t like to rewrite the same memories if I can help it – at least, not yet. 

It’s not 2017 anymore. It’s 2022. Somehow, the “me” that applied frantically to every writing or editing job within a fifty-mile radius of home, read Robert Frost and G.K. Chesterton at lunch breaks, and devoured podcasts on faith, literature, and beauty on long commutes is gone. I’m not a new college grad trying to market herself to potential employers. I’m not the bewildered new car owner trying to figure out if $200 was an overcharge for an oil change. 

This summer, I wrote a speech for a friend’s wedding. Writing that speech required me to delve into the memories of all that we had been at summer camp and college together, from kayaking at dawn to late-night hot chocolate. Remembering it all, and knowing that the years between then and now will only continue to grow, gave me that same feeling you get when you’re underwater and look up to see the shimmering circle of the sun.

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days,” said Flannery O’Connor in Mystery and Manners. That may be true, but it’s a lot easier to find things to write about now that I have worked in the adult world for a few years. For the seminar, I chose a memory from 2018: the morning when I woke up alone in a lakehouse in February. I had forgotten to pull the curtains closed, so my first sight was of whist mist hovering over the snow-muffled lake under a rosy sunrise.

Is it ok to change or rearrange details in my story? What is your earliest memory? Are we remembering, or reconstructing? What is episodic vs. semantic memory? How do you draw meaning out of sensory data and specific events? The writing seminar group met in a barn-turned-venue full of framed mirrors. Squirrels and chipmunks skittered over the tin roof as we talked. Tiny flames flickered in tea lights on the table. We shared memories, stories, techniques, questions, and mutual wonder, taking breaks to scribble thoughts for writing exercises. 

That night, my first in-person Hutchmoot conference began. 

Rooms named for C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, Frederick Buechner, and Walter Wangerin; a pottery wheel and freshly-fired pieces in one corner; books on poetry, philosophy, aesthetics, and story everywhere; a gallery of paintings, sketches, linocuts, and engravings; jam and coffee and biscuits; secret puzzles stashed in random places. Concerts and writing workshops; sessions on sacred symbolism, the art of adaptation, and the making of chai; conversations with people who loved books, had traveled to or from Libya, Japan, Mali, and other faraway, and many people who had suffered deeply. 

It was a feast, a carnival, a holiday, and a whirlwind in one. I found that two years of limited large-group interactions had left me ill-prepared for so much richness all at once – by the end of some sessions or discussions I was exhausted beyond coherent thought or speech. I met many sweet friends for the first time, or the first time in a long time, who have shared their hearts and imaginations with me through their writing. Our conversations were the best part; their wisdom and encouragement was a walled garden in itself, lovely and safe. 

I couldn’t help thinking about how my 2017 and 2018-selves would have reacted to all of it. I was hopeful; lonely; ambitious; a yearner, a day-dreamer, and an anxious worker. Younger-me may have handled the exhaustion better than my 2022-self, being more used to in-person interaction. She would have been breathless with excitement, eager to join in this fellowship of beauty and adventure. Her own life would have appeared dull, boring, and limited compared with the beautiful worlds of art-making, travel, and friendships that each speaker and conversant wove with their words.

At 2022, I don’t think I’m wiser, but I do know one thing: the world I ached to join, the realm in which people do walking-tours and have house concerts and read the most wonderful books, is not something far away and unattainable. It’s real, but it’s something I can make for myself, in my own way. A good life is made as well as given. 

Between my younger and current self, I feel a little lost – partly in attending this conference, partly because my move to Tennessee is still so recent. In speaking of age and childlikeness, Madeline L’Engle said something that has encouraged me: “I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five, and . . . and . . . and . . . / If we lose any part of ourselves, we are thereby diminished. If I cannot be thirteen and sixty-one simultaneously, part of me has been taken away.” (Taken from Walking on Water.)

I am all the ages I have ever been. I’m still the new college grad, the child, the entry-level employee, and the graduate student. I’m also all the selves of all the places I’ve been, including New England, Maui, Yosemite, Glacier, Iceland, Scotland, and Tennessee. Thinking of myself as many overlapping selves is somehow comforting. It turns aging into addition and expansion instead of loss. It turns my heart into a forest growing taller and wilder and thicker with golden leaves.

Wonders of a Southern Summer

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Amur honeysuckle. Black cherry. Honey locust. Tree-of-heaven. Sugar Hackberry. Eastern redcedar. Southern magnolia. Sawtooth blackberry. Crape-myrtle. Queen Anne’s-lace. The deep greens and golds, purples and whites of the flora is mesmerizing enough, but their fragrances make their own sacred pleasure-dome (to plagiarize Coleridge) in the warm air. The beauty makes me feel like I’m in some faraway, exotic place on vacation, but I’m not. This is my new home.

Dove’s-feather white. Enormous as whales. Billowing like sails. Tinged with baby’s-breath blue. Scattered and wispy. Gray and thundering. A hilly country with more pastures and fields than forests and mountains has opened up the vast and quiet world of clouds to me. The humidity is heavy on my lungs and clammy on my skin, but makes each rainstorm a sweet relief. Cloudbursts douse the dry, dusty ground and brown grass, filling ditches and rivers. They keep the greenery lush – apart from a few leaves that have shriveled in the heat, turned banana-yellow, and fallen.

Tiny, white-eared rabbits at silflay during golden hour. Cheery goldfinches, elusive cardinals, pert mockingbirds, and aggressive blue jays hopping around bird feeders. A mother cat and three silky black kittens with golden eyes watching me at dusk. A snake longer than my arm curled lazily in the middle of a path. Many of these creatures are familiar to me, but I love watching the drama of their alert watchfulness and quick movements on my walks. My own creature, a jolly golden retriever, enjoys chasing most of them, tongue hanging out, tail wagging.

A high school performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” A four-person cast in a production of C.S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce.” Lectures on time, the Christian values embedded in our culture, grief, and joy at the Rabbit Room’s North Wind Manor. Over the past few years, I have trained myself to listen to rumors of talks and conferences, performances and concerts that I could possibly attend on Eventbrite, Universe, Facebook, Instagram, the websites of faith & art or Christian-based intellectual organizations, and blog posts. Now, it is so good to have this wealth of opportunities within easy driving distance. Each event is a small wellspring of ponderings on time, love, justice, and joy that keep me from drying up in the grinding necessities of life (like grocery shopping and taxes).

The turbulence of the past few years in the world and my life – COVID, moving a few times, war, government changes, travel, making and canceling plans – have made me expect ephemerality. As I shopped and hauled and hammered and shifted new furniture, I kept wondering how long it will be before I have to break down what I built, repack my possessions, and move somewhere else. I don’t feel comfortable imagining myself becoming safe and settled anywhere for more than a year. When will the next pandemic, tornado, hurricane, or recession break? When will I need to make a career movie or transition for family or friends? Every anchor I screw into drywall and rug I unroll is an attempt to create a fragile but cozy haven for a time, however long that time is.

In these golden, sweltering, precious summer days, I’m reading stories and trying to craft my own. I savored Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White in the sultry afternoon sun by the pool. I paged through Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There on my phone as I waited in line at the county clerk’s office for new license plates. Every free evening, I hunt for magical creatures and literary archetypes in The Lore of Scotland and The Folk Tales of Scotland by the flickering light of a honey-scented candle. I can feel potential future readers with me in every scene I craft, as if I’m the driver of a safari bus tour, hoping I don’t run us all off the road into the jungle of clichés, melodrama, confusion, preachiness, or boredom.

But finally, after empty for so long, I’m able to dream again.