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Forged: A timeless way of living. A podcast about forging lives of discipline, delight, craft, and calling that carry enduring wisdom into modern life.
Hey, folks. This is Brian Williams, host of Forged Timeless Ways of Living, a podcast of the Humanitas Institute about forging well lived lives of discipline, delight, craft, calling. Today on Forged, I'm really delighted to be joined by singer, songwriter, storyteller, and founder of the Rabbit Room, Andrew Peterson. So welcome to Forged, Andrew.
Andrew Peterson:Thanks for having me.
Brian Williams:Of course, to that list, if you know Andrew, you know I could also add author, filmmaker, publisher, beekeeper, I think gardener, and husband and and father. So a man of many, many hats and many, many talents. Now, of my musical friends know Andrew through the 10 plus albums he has released. Many of my 10 year old daughter's friends know Andrew through his award winning Wingfeather Saga series. And many of my other friends in academia and theology and the arts know him for the gatherings and friendships that have formed around the Rabbit Room and what they call their hutchmoot in Nashville where Andrew lives.
Brian Williams:For those of you who don't know Andrew, I think I might describe him as a steward of songs and stories and a shepherd of singers and storytellers. So let me start with that, Andrew. Do do you see yourself in that description? A steward of songs and stories, and a shepherd of singers and storytellers?
Andrew Peterson:No. I don't think I would I I I'm not gonna say you're wrong, but I I don't know that I've ever thought of myself quite that way. I may be, but I don't I don't think of it that way. I don't you know, the the the kinda gathering aspect of our lives where Jamie and I tend to we love to host, and, you know, the rabbit room was born out of the this community that I find myself in here in Nashville, and the friendships that have kind of been born around us have been kind of just a I I really think the Holy Spirit's work. I I it's not something that we initially set out to do terribly intentionally.
Andrew Peterson:It was the kind of thing where friends pointed out to us, you know that you guys gather people a lot. You know that this is a thing that you do, and Jamie and I were kind of surprised. And then, you know, once we realized it, we leaned into it a little bit. But it tends to happen pretty organically. And as far as the stewarding of songs and stories, I think I think everybody at best is doing that.
Andrew Peterson:I I I just try really hard to think of myself first as a member of a community, you know? Yeah. Okay. As a member of my family, of our local church, of our neighborhood, and and then if somebody asks what I do, it's it's well, I I'm the funny thing is I still mainly think of myself as a songwriter, but that's become not the main thing that I do nowadays, you know?
Brian Williams:Yeah. What what how would your kids answer that question? They if somebody asks you, what does my dad do? Somebody asked my my my daughter when she was younger what her mom and dad did. She said, well, my mom teaches art, and my dad, he drinks coffee and reads books.
Brian Williams:And I was like, oh, okay. That's that's that's pretty pretty close. That's what she sees me, basically.
Andrew Peterson:That does not sound like a terrible life. No. That's a pretty
Brian Williams:good Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:I don't know. That's a good question. I I think they would probably think of me as a songwriter first like I would, just because that's what I did for most of their childhood. And I, you know, I started writing the Wingfeather books kinda concurrently, but the books didn't you know, it takes a long time to write a book, let alone a book series. And so by the time the book series was out and complete, the kids were in high school and heading off heading off to college.
Andrew Peterson:And then, you know, the books didn't really take off until twenty twenty ish, and and then that led to the TV show and that kind of thing. So the the funny thing is that, like, I've toured the whole time. I still love love playing music and hope to always play music in some capacity, but I haven't written a ton of new songs in the last several years. Like, I I it's funny. I finished the the Resurrection Letters project, which was this it's a three album kinda collection of songs that are loosely connected to well, loosely and not so loosely connected to the resurrection of Jesus.
Andrew Peterson:And it just felt like I had crossed a weird finish line in my in my mind. Like, this is a project that was ten years in the making. And, you know, in some ways, my career started with Behold the Lamb of God, the Christmas tour about the incarnation, and then I, you know, meanwhile, put out a lot of just kind of storytelling albums. And then and then the last thing that I put out was this Resurrection Letters volume one, which has Izzy Worthy on it and which is a song that I've been really grateful that the church has has sung. And and I just kinda feel like if that was the last thing I ever did, that's a pretty satisfying arc of a body of work, and I kinda don't wanna mess it up.
Andrew Peterson:I kinda feel like if I were to die tomorrow, that's what I that's what I did with the first thirty years of my life. And so anyway, all that to say, I I'm still writing songs here and there, and at some point, there will be enough to put on an album, and I'd love to record it. But when I do shows now, the reason I brought all that up, I'm I'm a rambler, so I found my way back to my point, which is that that I most of my shows these days are are I'm not doing new songs. I love playing old songs, and and it it I haven't slowed down at all. I don't feel the need to make more music.
Andrew Peterson:I I feel like there's a 150 songs to choose from, and I'd love to play all of them. But the but then the other funny thing that's happened is that more and more people are coming to the shows with as a family with the Wingfeather books, and they're, like, more or less unfamiliar with my music. And these poor kids these poor kids show up at this concert going like, why is the guy that wrote the book I like going on and on about his feelings? You know? And and writing these songs about depression and whatever.
Andrew Peterson:So it's just a funny funny place. Yeah. But I but I also just love it. I I I'm grateful for all of it.
Brian Williams:Yeah. Well and I think I mean, that was when I when I was trying to think about how how to describe you. I just you've been involved in so many things. Obviously, singer songwriter, but then storyteller. And then I I I again, I think Shepard and and Stewart are not not not wrong with the kind of vocation you've been drawn into over the years.
Brian Williams:Right? Mhmm. It means it does seem to me you care about stories and you care about songs. You've just released this live album of all the Rich Mullins songs that feels like stewarding songs. You care about the kind of stories we tell.
Brian Williams:And to from from the outside, it looks like the Rabbit Room is a is a is a gathering place.
Andrew Peterson:Mhmm.
Brian Williams:Like a like a shepherd of of gathering other singers, storytellers, and artists to to give them a home and a and a community. Yeah. Seems like that might be work that you've you've I mean, like a lot of our vocations, you wake up and find yourself doing something. Right? And you go, oh, maybe I guess I've been called into this work, or this work has like just developed naturally.
Brian Williams:I mean, that Absolutely. That the origin of rabbit room? I mean, it is it like, has it become a place? I wonder if can just say a little bit more about that. Like, is it a place Yeah.
Brian Williams:It seems to me, where singers, storytellers, and artists have have gathered and found a home?
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. That I mean, that was the the initial kind of the initiating vision behind it was it was twofold. The first part of it was, I really have had a heart and still have a heart for the independent musician, the author who is doing really good and beautiful work, but it it isn't the kind of thing that's ever gonna be picked up by a Christian publishing company.
Brian Williams:You know
Andrew Peterson:what I mean?
Brian Williams:Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:When people say I remember back in the day, people would say, Man, I just don't like Christian music. And I would say, Well, you're just listening to the wrong Christian music. God keeps making poets. God keeps, making songwriters that are wonderful. They're just not the popular ones always.
Andrew Peterson:Sometimes they are, but but but there's always been this this wonderful, like, faithful undercurrent of songwriters and poets and storytellers who are believers, who are putting out really good and lasting work. It just may take a generation or so for people to notice it, you know, like George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins and all these great poets. I think that God keeps making those people. And so as a a person who had a little bit of a platform early on in my career, like, was very grateful to be, you know, signed to a record deal and had a few albums on the record deal before due to some a bunch of circumstances. Was dropped from my label, but that was when I released Behold the Lamb of God finally and released some independent stuff, and just knew the struggle really well.
Andrew Peterson:Knew this knew the feeling of I feel called to this. I'm I feel like there's a certain kind of song that that God used to get to my heart when I was lost. And and I really believe that songs can do that magical thing, this this amazing thing. Like, it was for me, it was a Rich Mullen song. I I it was the doorway that I stepped through into the love of Christ.
Andrew Peterson:And so I I've always felt like, well, I I believe in that kind of song, and it's not always a worship song or a pop Christian song. Sometimes it just it sounds more like James Taylor or Paul Simon. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so I've I've, for a long time, wanted to to support those artists.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. So the when I say it's twofold, part of it forming the rabbit room was I wanna find a way to elevate and draw attention to what is excellent and praiseworthy in in the work that these these people are doing. And and so to create a platform that would be a gathering point for those people, so that for all the other people out there in the world who don't know how to find that kind of music, we can say, oh, oh, come here, and we can help you we can kinda curate and help you discover some of that stuff. And it was also a gathering point for those people in the audience. It wasn't just for the writers.
Andrew Peterson:It was like the first hutchmoot that we did was a chance to get in the room, not just with the songwriters and authors and stuff, but it was also for the people who were fans of those people to gather and eat together. And, you know, when you walked into the room at the first TouchMoot, it just felt like you were there was a there was a shorthand almost. You didn't have to explain your love of George McDonald.
Brian Williams:You know what I mean? No. Totally. I mean, it's it's when you find your people. And, you know, it's what it's what Lewis talks about with friendship.
Brian Williams:He's like, when you discover that other person that loves the same thing in common with you, and you your first expression is, oh, you too? I thought I was the only one. Right? And it, know Absolutely. It's when you walk into a room and you're like, oh, these are my people because we we have the same loves in common, and I don't have to explain my love of Hopkins or McDonald or whomever it happens to be.
Brian Williams:Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Totally. And so there it turns out there's a lot of people out there in the world who who long to have those kinds of conversations and aren't getting them always in their community. And then the other cool thing that happened was that we realized early on that we needed to make a point to people at Hutchinson in the rabbit room that, like, we are not a destination, we are a wayside in. Your own community.
Andrew Peterson:I mean, we we emailed a little bit before this about Wendell Berry and the idea of play place and how important place is and community. And so we try really hard to say, like, yes, welcome to Hutchmoop. This is an amazing place. It's a it's a weekend where we all kinda get a glimpse of, hopefully, of the kingdom. But then, you carry that light home, and and so we we can't be responsible.
Andrew Peterson:We can't be your community. That's not how it's meant to be. Your local church is meant to be, your neighbors, your neighborhood. And and so, yeah, that's been a cool cool thing about Hushmoot and the Rabbit Room too, is that we've begun to notice other communities like us Okay. Popping up out there.
Andrew Peterson:And Yeah.
Brian Williams:Because that's what was gonna add. I was gonna and this is where I pick up the metaphor of you as a shepherd of singers and storytellers, Andrew, just because of the hutch boot, and just what I've heard about it, and the rabbit room, bringing people in, giving them a place to find their people, encouraging them, kinda nurturing those communities, and then it sounds like kinda sending them back out. Hutchmood is a gathering. Hutchmood is a gathering in Nashville where authors, singers, songwriters, storytellers, and their fans come together. Is that is that right?
Brian Williams:Is that fair for a couple days of, like, hanging out and and reading and presenting to each other?
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. And that that's a great description of it, actually. The the I often describe it as a three day feast where we celebrate the way God speaks through his creation. And that's both the natural world and the the sub created world of of the and and just the way God speaks through these image bearing humans that we come into contact with. And so so, yeah, it's like a it's less academic, although it does you know, it's it's it's not not academic, but it's also just like a celebration.
Brian Williams:Yeah. This is my my I think we have a mutual friend, Kirsten Jeffrey Johnson, who's a George McDonald scholar. And I think probably a decade ago, she was like, well, you know Andrew Peterson and his hutch moots. Right? I was like, I actually don't.
Brian Williams:And she's like, how do you not know him, and how have you not gone for one of these yet? Because she's like, Brian, what you're doing and what they're doing, you know, you guys care about the same kinds of same kinds of things. Let me ask this question, Andrew, do you think artists, especially, you know, painters, musicians, poets, do they need those kind of communities, like, a unique way? Those kinds of gatherings in a unique way, and that kind of, you know, shepherding encouragement?
Andrew Peterson:You I think so. As artists.
Brian Williams:Yeah. And why why if so, like, what why why is that? What's your experience been with that?
Andrew Peterson:Well, I I would just say, I'm not sure it's unique to artists, but I do think that artists need community. I was just talking to somebody last night about it was a it a singer songwriter who I hadn't ever met, but we'd kinda run-in the same circles in Nashville for, like, thirty years. And we were talking about our careers, and I I told her that I think the best thing that happened to me in Nashville was not signing a record deal or I don't know, I can't even think of it. Or like the specific movers and shakers that I may have met Those or things are blessings for sure. But like, I think it was that when I got dropped from my record deal in what year was it?
Andrew Peterson:O o three or o two or something like that. I was just devastated because I thought, is this the end of my career? And I looked up, you know, I kinda washed my face and realized I was already in the studio making the Behold the Lamb of God record. I was, like, already in the thick of it. So I had my assignment Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:And I I didn't have time to wallow in self pity. I had my assignment. And then I kinda looked around, and I realized that God had planted me in an amazing community of artists. Mhmm. Singer songwriters who reminded me that, you know, what what actual obedience looks like in the kingdom.
Andrew Peterson:And that's that's an obedience to to God's invitation to to make known the deeds of the Lord among the nations, you know? And and you don't need a record label to do that. And so when I looked around and saw my friend Ben Shive, and Andy Gullahorn, and Jill Phillips, and Sandy McCracken, and all these all these songwriters who had kind of come to Nashville around the same time and felt similarly called to a kind of music that didn't fit into the Christian music kind of I don't know. Just the expectation that people seem to have. We we needed each other.
Andrew Peterson:That's the thing. Is I knew that I needed my friends to look me in the eye and say, don't stop playing music. And I got to look them in the eye and say, don't stop playing music. Like, who who cares if if the masses will ever hear your songs? I need your songs.
Andrew Peterson:You know? And and vice versa. And so yeah. So definitely, community is one of the greatest blessings in my life as an artist. Same thing is true of the author thing.
Andrew Peterson:But it but you don't have to look far. You can look at Van Gogh, and, like, there's there was a community of of painters there. I I can't even the Inklings is a great picture of the same thing. Like, there's so many examples of artists who found each other because they were kind of otherwise alone in in their sense of calling or what they loved, what what woke their hearts up, and they needed each other. And that community, like, iron sharpens iron, they all got better because of their friendship.
Brian Williams:Yeah. Yeah. Musicians do have an advantage here because you guys can actually, like, make music together, and you need each other to make music because you can't play every instrument at the same time. Whereas an author and a visual artist are often in their studio by by them by themselves.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. You can get kinda siloed, and it can get a little bit Absolutely. If you've you've written, like, you know that it it is still a community effort. Like, you still need editors. You still have peep friends who, you know, test read your stuff that you're working on.
Andrew Peterson:It it is very much a a community thing.
Brian Williams:Yeah. Let me ask this question about some of those musicians or people maybe who have come into the rabbit room. My doctoral supervisor, Nigel Bigger, was always really good to tell us, you need to be faithful to your calling, but flexible in your career. Because he to us academics, he was saying, your your calling is to be a a Christian intellectual. But you might not get paid to be a scholar and an academic.
Brian Williams:And so that idea of being faithful to your calling, flexible in your your career. I have a I have a dear friend. She's a wonderful vocalist, a wonderful musician, but that's never translated into an actual career. Right? So so how how do you how do you help someone like that?
Brian Williams:Right? Somebody who who has a calling as a musician or as an artist, artist, but but that's that's never never gonna gonna be a career for them. How do you help them think about that that that passion, that talent, that love? I mean, I think a lot of people probably abandon it, and they think I can't make money at it, so I'm gonna let it go. But how how do you speak into that to that person?
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. We talk about that a lot in the in the Rabbit Room circles. Just the just the idea that we wanna reclaim the word amateur as a good thing. You know? And the etymology of the word is it's rooted in love.
Andrew Peterson:And so the the idea that you're doing a thing because you love it, not because you're getting a paycheck is is is a huge deal. And so we try to encourage people. A lot of it is informed by the kind of Tolkien idea in his essay on fairy stories, which is a marvelous essay. If you haven't read it, you must. It's kind of his 70 page theology of storytelling, and why it's Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Why it does what it does in our hearts. But he talks about subcreation, the idea that one of the ways that we bear out the image of God is our not just that we make things, not just that we we rearrange the world around us to make it beautiful, but that we actually delight in having done it. You know? So there's this pattern of God said, let there be light, and then he stands back and says, and it was good. Right?
Andrew Peterson:So we we we we do that without realizing it, you know? We we whether it's a paint by number or a table that we built or a dinner party that we hosted, when it's over, we look at what we've done. We got to participate in bringing order out of chaos and kind of inviting the kingdom of God here on Earth. And we stand back and we say, Wow, it was good. That cake that I made was delicious.
Andrew Peterson:And so so we're trying to just elevate this idea that that creativity, human creativity, is in all of us, that it's part of our DNA as image bearers. And I think that one of the things that I'm I find myself talking about a lot is just this idea that well, first of all, it's a soapbox that I'm sure people are so sick of hearing me talk about, but I don't like the word creative as a noun. I don't I I it bothers me when I hear people refer to themselves as a creative.
Brian Williams:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Because I wanna be like, well, guess what? There's you're you're not special. Like, I'm not special because I I write songs. The creativity that I kind of live out is no more important than the creativity a school teacher or a doctor employs to find a solution to a problem, to make the world more beautiful, to to again participate in the the kind of, like, invasion of God's kingdom here on Earth. We all are invited into that, and creativity is the way we do it.
Andrew Peterson:So my friend Jonathan Rogers, you know, I heard him say one time that, you know, creativity is a pie. The arts only make up one slice of that pie, And it's not even a terribly important one. You know? And so so everybody is creative. So we're we're often trying to, like, remind people, whatever it is that you do, you can go home, and you you are you are living out the image of God you Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:In this way. Yeah. And so to elevate it above career, it's not less important, it's actually more important. If everybody was doing that, I think it would be good. And so, you know, while also holding intention, the idea that if you are called to be an artist, then you're also called to to, like, reach for making it excellent, and try try really hard to make it good.
Andrew Peterson:But also, to not let that stop you from from writing a song, even if you're a terrible songwriter. Like, go write the song. It's great. God uses bad songs all the time. And so, you know, and so it gives us the freedom to kind of like play like kids and and tear out into the world and
Brian Williams:make Do the you Anglican priest and author Robert Farrar Capon?
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. He's a big yeah. Yeah.
Brian Williams:He's got that great theological cookbook, Supper of the Lamb. Right. But he's got another book on the priesthood of Adam, and it's an essay he has got an essay, a chapter in there I always have my students read called The Oblation of Things. And he's got this great he starts by reflecting on creation, and he says, you know, basically what God did, he just like gave Adam and Eve a starter garden. And then he was like, now you go make something with the starter garden I gave you.
Brian Williams:You wanna move the rose bushes? You wanna divert that river? You wanna build something cool over there? Great. And then this idea of the oblation of things, the oblation is like lifting things up.
Brian Williams:I mean, the model is like bread and wine being lifted up and transformed into the body and blood. He says, we just do that with stuff. We lift stuff up into our history, and we make more of it than it would have been had we left it on its own. Right? I'm sitting at a beautiful wooden table.
Brian Williams:Well, was a tree that fell in the forest at some point in time, but somebody took it and planed it and stained it and carved it, and now it's a beautiful table. Notes are just random notes until you arrange them into a song. Pigments on a palette, they're they're they're kinda chaos, but then a visual artist makes more of them than they were if they were left to themselves.
Andrew Peterson:Or Uh-huh.
Brian Williams:Somebody in the kitchen. Right? You've got 40 ingredients there. You don't wanna eat any one of them on their own, but part of our priesthood is to to follow the image of God and and make things with creation, and make more of them than they than they would have been had they been left to themselves. So I I mean and I I think that's that vocation of the artist is the is the kind of human vocation, I think Capon would say.
Andrew Peterson:Man, I love that. I love that. And and Kaypon is great. Supper of the Lamb is like a a a keystone book in in the Rabbi Room world. Like, we used to read passages from it before dinner.
Andrew Peterson:And yeah. It's a marvelous book. If you're out there and you have not yet read The Supper of the Lamb, it is just a stunning book.
Brian Williams:He's got a great opening where he he takes you through cutting an onion. Might remember this, and layering the onion. So when when I taught creative writing at at Carre Paravel Latin School back in Topeka, there there was always a day when I'd have everybody bring in onions. And the rest of the school would be like, oh my gosh, it's William's onion day. Because it would just permeate the hallways, but he just walks you through and you find yourself marveling in wonder at really, you know, one of the most common vegetables there is, an onion, until you start peeling it apart and you realize the smell, the touch, the texture, the veins.
Brian Williams:Anyway, he it's it's a marvelous piece of of work.
Andrew Peterson:It is so good. Yeah.
Brian Williams:And it's got real it's got real recipes in there, so you can eat after you eat it.
Andrew Peterson:That's so true. I and and I think that, you know, I when I we were talking a little earlier about a little bit about how, you know, the tradition that we grew up up in. I did not grow up in a kind of faith tradition that talked much about the the goodness of the Earth. You know? We There there was this, you know, sense that the Earth is all gonna burn anyway.
Andrew Peterson:What's the point of worrying too much about this place? And Kpon, and and for that matter, Tolkien and Lewis, like, they they've the reading of a lot of these books has taught me of the the the that it is okay to love this world that God also loves. Like, he loves this place. He made it. It's it's it's one of the revelations of his character.
Andrew Peterson:And so so it changed the way that I you know, I I often felt a little bit, even as a kid, guilty for thinking the world was so beautiful. Because I was the implication in church was heaven is the thing where you're supposed to have your mind set. Yeah. And, you know, the idea of there being a new creation, a redeemed creation, was foreign to me until I read Surprised by Hope, N. T.
Andrew Peterson:Wright's book. And so so all of a sudden, you know, I I I remember as a kid perking up when we would sing This Is My Father's World or For the Beauty of the Earth.
Brian Williams:Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:You know, there's so many songs like that. All Creatures of Our God and King. And I would I was deeply moved by those because I, as a kid, found creation to be just staggeringly beautiful. Yeah. And I and it didn't make sense to me that it was just gonna be thrown away.
Andrew Peterson:And so then, to read Capon, who says that it's okay to delight in an onion, because an onion is an incredible gift from the Lord, was such a relief to me. It was this reconciliation of the winds of heaven and the stuff of earth, in Rich Mullen's phrase, this idea that Jesus is the place where these two things come together, and and it is okay to to find the world beautiful, and to worship God because of it.
Brian Williams:Yeah. And, you know, I mean, the early church and medieval theologians knew this because they centered on the incarnation. And they said that, you know, not only did God become human, but the world was made by, through, and for that in fleshed God, and therefore, it must be good. And you get you get great authors in the thirteenth century, one of my favorites, Hugh Saint Victor, talking about the goodness and the importance of what he calls the mechanical arts or the common arts. And he just goes through, and here's this monastic in an abbey reflecting on the goodness of food preparation, and Galatian tarts, and beer, and mead, and fabric, and sculpture.
Brian Williams:And you're like, oh, you have Saint Victor gets it because he understands I think I think he understands Yeah. Creation. You know? I mean, yeah, I I had a similar experience. I I think as a kid, I I was like, okay.
Brian Williams:I'm a Christian, and I and then I guess I go to heaven when I die, but what do I do in the meantime? I didn't have a strong vision of, like, what a well lived ordinary life pursuing basic human goods in the world in which God set me. I didn't know what that necessarily looked like. I mean, I probably saw it implied. My my mom was a wonderful chef.
Brian Williams:We hosted people all the time. My dad was a musician, and so I saw it practiced, but I didn't have a a conceptual framework for for that Mhmm. Whatsoever. Let me ask you a question about that. Let me follow-up a question on on on your your you wrote a book recently on on trees, man.
Brian Williams:So so my my wife was also a Peterson before I married her and and made her a Williams, and and and Kim's happy place is her her classroom, Trader Joe's, I think, and the forest. You know? And and she comes alive, I think, as a material artist just with the the the wood and dirt and and mulch of of, like, matter.
Andrew Peterson:Mhmm.
Brian Williams:What is that what is what is that encounter with with trees and creation for you? Who are you when you're really encountering kind of a natural world like that?
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Well, I I I was thinking about this just the other day. I was at a waterfall, Cumberland Falls in Kentucky, because I was speaking at University of the Cumberlands, and I had some time off in the afternoon, so I drove to this waterfall. And I like I like to sketch and draw plein air stuff as much as I can, and it's been a really fun practice on the road to try to find some time during the day to get outside into the woods and draw. And so I and I also my Lenten practice is to write sonnets every day.
Andrew Peterson:Try to write sonnets every day. And so I I went during my break to the this waterfall, and it was just really stunning, beautiful place, and a big thundering waterfall. And I sketched it for about an hour, and then had to get back to the school, and I was thinking about it later. I wanted to write a sonnet about it. And in the sonnet, I wish I could just read it to you.
Andrew Peterson:I don't I don't
Brian Williams:You have it?
Andrew Peterson:Look it up. But I mean, I do yeah. Let me can I? Is that okay? Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Let let me let me just open it up really quick.
Brian Williams:See see if you can and and find it. I I love that as a as as a Lenten practice.
Andrew Peterson:It it is really good. Sonnets are a blast, because there's this they're short You've got a formal way to express
Brian Williams:making it up. It's like, okay, you've got an eight line, then you've got a six line response. Yeah. It's it's great.
Andrew Peterson:So it's like Did you find it? It's like doing a crossword puzzle. Yeah. So I wrote this, maybe there's a metaphor about time hidden in the roar of Cumberland Falls. Some grand connection to Wordsworth's Sublime, where the heart transcends and holiness calls.
Andrew Peterson:And if somehow I can bottle the awe and tether it fast to syllables, 10, and lines, 14, the cataract I saw will gush a poem to make your head spin. But the truth of it, honest to goodness, is that I merely lit my pipe and drew with a brain as blank as a fresh canvas. No metaphor, no deep insight broke through. I was fully present though on the bluff, and the world as it was, more than enough. So I think the the what I kind of was able trying to articulate there was the idea that, like, it is enough to just be out in the woods.
Andrew Peterson:It is enough to just look at a waterfall and delight in the waterfall as a waterfall without trying to connect it to some great scriptural truth. And I think that I the the marvelous thing to me about trees or about walking around in the forest is that they are a perfect metaphor for so many good things, you know. You know the you know this, the ancient Christians
Brian Williams:used to
Andrew Peterson:say that there were two books of Revelation. There was
Brian Williams:Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:The book of scripture and the book of nature. And so, one of God's revelations to us is His creation, and Jesus constantly gesturing to farmers and seeds to say, this is what the kingdom of God looks like. So there's a sense in which if you were a student like Solomon was of trees and creation, birds, whatever, then you were also inadvertently being a student of God's character and and what he is like, what he's showing us. So the the good thing is, like, trees are amazing as metaphors, but don't forget that trees are also amazing as trees.
Brian Williams:Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:You know what I mean? It can like, I think there can can be a Christian, you know, Christian ish tendency to to look for a lesson in everything. And, man, what what if an onion is just amazing as an onion? Absolutely. You know?
Andrew Peterson:Yep. And so I think that's that's a lot of what I what I I was getting at was just this idea that if if I mean, there's a lot that I was getting at, but that's part of it is just don't forget that the world is amazing. That And
Brian Williams:that last line, the the world, is is this what you said? The world as it was was more than enough? Mhmm. Yeah. That's a really lovely line, and I think about that sometimes with a work of visual art or a song or The Onion.
Brian Williams:Like, the the mere encounter with the beauty of a of a beautiful song or the beauty of, you know, the the the tree, or the goodness of the tree, or the beauty of a work of art, I don't need more than that. And even if it's like a Mark Rothko painting of like an orange and red square, I'm like, yeah. Do you need more than orange and red? Like, give me orange and red in a square. I'll take
Andrew Peterson:it.
Brian Williams:Uh-huh. Because that's so rich. And just the mere encounter with beauty, I mean, if if that's the nature that God gave us, to find those kinds of things good in and of themselves and satisfying our to our nature, then yes, I can think of it as a metaphor. Yes, I can, I guess, maybe draw a lesson out of it, or I can just delight in the the this experience of my senses, the food passing over my my taste buds? Mhmm.
Brian Williams:Right? Or the the the visual feast of the color for my eyes, or the visual feast of a song in my ear. You know, I think we it's funny we do this, like, you see a sunset, you can say it's beautiful, but you don't ask, what's it mean? Or if I hear a piece of instrumental music, you don't say, yeah, but what's it really mean? You're just like, enjoy the experience of the encounter itself.
Brian Williams:And and I think that's what you're describing with with trees.
Andrew Peterson:I would say to part of it too is, at at the very least, let that be your first impulse. Like, it's okay, like, after the fact to kinda like, okay, let's see what else is under the surface here. What what can I draw from this? But let your posture be first to just receive it as as a gift. Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:And and I think the same is true of films, good novels. Like like, approach the novel as a story and let it just be a story first. And then then it gets to do its work in you, and the Holy Spirit can, like, unlock what it wants to unlock he wants to unlock in you. And so and I think that's, like, you know, one of Tolkien's things was like, no. This isn't a World War two metaphor.
Andrew Peterson:Like like, Lord of the Rings is is a a fairy tale. It's a story. Like, receive it as a story. But then if you if you get the don't get the cart before the horse, you can there is a wealth of goodness and beauty that can kinda come from it. But and I think it just occurs to me that, like, part of learning to to enjoy a tree for being a tree or an onion for being an onion or a Rothko for being what it is, trains us to also encounter other humans first as image bearing, wonderful, remarkable creations, not for what they can do for me, not for what I think they should be, not for what lessons I can draw or whatever, but just receive them as they are, as as these amazing things.
Andrew Peterson:You know, Merton's epiphany, Thomas Merton's epiphany that is in in Downtown Louisville, Kentucky, there's a historical marker sign. I don't know if you know this. At the corner of 4th And Walnut. And it's just like one of the, civil war Yeah. Historical markers.
Brian Williams:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:It's so cool to me that Louisville saw this moment with Thomas Merton as worthy of landmarking.
Brian Williams:Okay. Didn't know that. I've been to Louisville
Andrew Peterson:several times,
Brian Williams:but I've never seen this.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. You should check it out. It's very cool. But I I had read about Merton's epiphany, but, like, Thomas Merton was a was a monastic author, lived at the Abbey Of Gethsemane in Kentucky. And anyway, he there's this the way he described it was, was walking at the corner of 4th And Walnut, and I looked around, and all of a sudden, I saw all these people walking around shining like the sun.
Andrew Peterson:And they had no idea how beautiful they were. And it was this this moment where he it was almost like the veil was lifted like Elisha, you know? And he was able to see things as they really were, and what he saw was that every human being that he met was this, like, radiant image bearing gift. And and, man, what a blessing to walk through the world seeing every human being as that. Right?
Andrew Peterson:See them as they are, not as you expect them to be or want them to be or think they should be, but as they are right now. And and I think that when we do that, it actually gives us a little glimpse into the way the Lord sees us. Like Yeah. He loves us as we are, not as we should be. He's got a plan.
Andrew Peterson:He's shaping us into something more and more Christ like. Right And then now, each as
Brian Williams:one of us are like slightly different refractions of his being. Right? Right. Mean, I Bonhoeffer's got a great line in his book Life Together, he says, God did not make other people in my image, but in his, and did not make them in his image in the way I would like them to have been made. He's got this sense that every person that I encounter, they might reveal something different about who God is because they too are an an instantiation of of his image.
Brian Williams:Yeah. Beautiful. And, you know, I I think we can practice to see people like that. And and practice, I think, to see creation as creation, as given to us by God for our delight and enjoyment. And and, you know, the the subcreations of his artists as creations given to us for for our delight.
Brian Williams:Yeah. That's great. So let me let me ask I'd I'd go down that line for a long time, but let me ask about storytelling, Andrew, because you're you are a storyteller. You're you're a musician, and you tell stories through your songs, but you spend a lot of time devoting devoted to telling stories to this Wingfeather Wingfeather series. What kind of stories do you wanna tell?
Andrew Peterson:What kind of stories do I wanna tell? I don't know. I I I would like to tell stories that woke something up in people. What I usually think about is the kind of stories that I loved when I was a kid or as a young man that tended to be high adventure and mystery, and I don't know how to how to put my finger on it. Whether it was a fantasy novel or a detective novel or whatever, just as a way of tapping into some I'm kind of like a I don't know that I'm a junkie, but I like to feel things.
Andrew Peterson:Like, when I listen to music, I usually have it turned up louder than everybody else in the car wants it to be. Because I wanna like I wanna feel the drums, and I wanna feel Yeah. Hear every little bit of the acoustic guitar or whatever the thing is. And so I'm kinda that way with stories too. Like, I tend to like really love a story that makes me kinda tremble a little bit.
Andrew Peterson:And that said, like, as I've gotten older, what makes me tremble has changed, you know? Now now what I feel I feel similar thrill when I read a Wendell Berry novel about a barber in a tiny Kentucky town. You know? I feel the trim tremor that I did when I was a kid when I was reading pulp fantasy novels. Like but that's that's what I'm always hoping for, is that, like, asking the Lord, if it is if you would do it, would you please take this feeble effort at writing a story, and on the other side of it, like, Holy Spirit move in the reader in whatever way you wanna do.
Andrew Peterson:And so, yeah, that's that's what I'm shooting for. But I I try really hard to to relinquish not relinquish control, but to relinquish the illusion of control. Because the truth is I cannot control what is gonna happen inside you when you read my book or listen to my song. All I can do is kind of offer my song up with hopes for what might happen, and then after that, like Flannery O'Connor said, it's none of my business.
Brian Williams:Yeah. Yeah. But as a musician and as an author, you you you do control that to some degree, don't you? I mean, you know, you know, if you're gonna go kind of like an Aaron Copeland riff or you're gonna go, know, some other direction. You know, that's gonna have some sort of emotional resonance most likely with your audience.
Brian Williams:Right? And with an author, if you do something with a character, you know, I mean, right, you you can flatten it out and you can tell a nice moralistic tale and there's gonna be a little lesson at the end. It's not gonna probably move anybody. Right? But but I I get the impression you're trying to avoid that kind of thing.
Brian Williams:Yeah. But but you're trying to draw them draw them in and kind of inflame their imagination somehow.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. I think what I'm getting at is the idea that, like, what what God does with that inflaming of the imagination is his business. I I I do think that, you know, a lot of times, you know, what comes to mind is do you remember the the revival at Asbury that happened a couple years ago?
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Where there was like kind of a big thing. It was in the news, and students were singing. I was actually supposed to perform in that chapel that week, and they they thankfully canceled the show. And I was so glad.
Andrew Peterson:I was like, I don't wanna be known as the guy who ended the Asbury revival. And so they rescheduled It's
Brian Williams:quenching for the spirit. I don't think that's a good thing. You don't wanna be that dude. Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:I didn't wanna be that guy. But, like, two years later, we were able to reschedule, and I went back, and
Brian Williams:and Okay.
Andrew Peterson:I was asking some people who were there. I was like, okay. So what was it like? And Yeah. And one of the people said that the pastor, who whoever it was that spoke that day, went over.
Andrew Peterson:And, like, when you're speaking at a college chapel, there's a hard cutoff because class is coming. You know? And his his talk went longer than a minute to, and he had to, like, truncate the end of it. And he finished the end of his talk, and he walked backstage, and he texted his wife and said, blew it again. Isn't that sad?
Brian Williams:Oh. Oh, interesting.
Andrew Peterson:And he kind of, like, had no idea, but, like, what had happened out in the audience. Whatever he had said, the Holy Spirit inhabited those words, and something happened. I I don't know how to describe it. But I I I anybody who's ever done a concert or preached a sermon or given a talk knows the feeling of, I really, really did a bad job. And those are the times when usually somebody will come up and find you and say, that was amazing.
Andrew Peterson:Thank you so much. It's like God sends these little envelopes of light to us to kind of remind us that it is not dependent on how well we executed the thing. And so No. And that way So I think that's what I'm saying.
Brian Williams:Yeah. That's right. That's right. You're calling it to be faithful to your craft. And your craft is the storyteller, and the songwriter, and the performer.
Brian Williams:What somebody else does with the the artifact that you've created, that's the spirit's work. Your calling is to be faithful in the production of that that piece of, you know, art, whatever it is.
Andrew Peterson:Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's the kind of story I'm trying to tell. And and, you know, with the Wingfeather saga in particular, like, there have been several examples of emails that I've gotten from people who have said, thank you so much for writing this particular part of the book, and I'll realize I did not intend that to be what your takeaway was at all.
Andrew Peterson:And and yet, there's just some some movement that happens. And so, you as the artist get to delight in these reminders that God sends along the way that he knows better than we do. Yeah. He's inviting us into something. And so yeah.
Andrew Peterson:But all that said, I still don't know what I'm doing. You know? I'm I'm I am five years late on a book right now that luckily the the publisher has been very patient with me. But Okay. But I just got busy.
Andrew Peterson:You know, I I I agreed to write the book during COVID, and after God of the Garden came out, and the Wingfeather TV show got picked up, and we started Yeah. I'm partly executive producing that. It's just and touring all the time, and Rabbit Room, whatever. And I just haven't had
Brian Williams:time And to watch swai this kids, and yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Yeah. But I really wanna write more, you know? I really wanna do it. And and every time I've sat down with some time to write, I'm like, you realize that you're starting at zero.
Andrew Peterson:Like, it this is just as hard as it was when I was beginning the first book of The Wingfeather Saga. Like, it is just as not get any easier. What what the only thing you that is different is that now I have more evidence that in the past that if I am faithful to the work, that a book will get written. You know? Whether it's good or bad, I don't know.
Andrew Peterson:But, like, the only way to write is to write. And so I'm trying to find a way to do it, but I'm I feel about as rookie ish as I did in the beginning.
Brian Williams:What about writing music? Is that is that do you feel the same way when you go to write a new song? Or is is you've been doing music for so long, has that does that flow in a way that, like, writing the novels doesn't? Is that is that is that a different experience or not thing?
Andrew Peterson:Just as hard. Yeah. No. I I like, the creative process has always been intimidating and difficult for me. And, yeah, I just it's just not easy.
Andrew Peterson:Like, you wouldn't believe the mound of terrible lines that I write to get to the one good one. You know? It's so demoralizing. Then you
Brian Williams:get have a yeah. I have a couple good friends who are musicians up in Boston, and we were talking about this. And, you know, they they were talking about the ratio what do they call it? The, you know, the ratio between lines that are trashed and lines that are preserved. And it was, you know, they were they were like, oh, it's it's 10 to one at least, you know, with respect to lines.
Brian Williams:Easy. Just don't they just don't make it or lines of music or or lyrics. And Mhmm. But then that can be discouraging. I mean, but I I don't know.
Brian Williams:Have you just accepted it? That's just the way it is, and I've gotta push through on my craft?
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. You know, all three of my kids are and their spouses are all in doing creative work. It's it's a pretty funny funny family.
Andrew Peterson:Like, when we get together at Thanksgiving, like, I realized last year that all of us are self employed. Like, all of the kids and all of their spouses are are more or less self employed because they're all in the arts in one way or another. And the cool thing so people have asked me, like, how did you what did you do to encourage your kids in in the arts and whatever? And part of it is that I didn't, you know. It wasn't that I didn't want them to get in go into it.
Andrew Peterson:I I thought, yeah, it'd be cool if they ended up doing something But I also didn't want them to ever have reason to resent me or feel like I was there was an expectation on them to do that. So we didn't make our kids take piano lessons or anything like that.
Brian Williams:You didn't?
Andrew Peterson:We tried a couple of times.
Brian Williams:You didn't try to cure curate did you try to curate their aesthetic taste? You must have fed them good books and good music though.
Andrew Peterson:Oh, definitely that. Definitely that. But but separate from any expectation that they were meant to then follow suit and make stuff, whatever. Yeah. But we encouraged it, but it wasn't like, you have to do this for your job.
Andrew Peterson:You know? I just didn't want them to I didn't want that baggage in their heads. But the cool thing is I tricked them, and they all ended up doing it. So
Brian Williams:Well done. Parenting one zero one. We were parenting lesson number one. That's right.
Andrew Peterson:But the cool thing one of the things I'm so proud of my kids and their spouses about is that they all just work really hard. They're all their work ethic is so impressive to me. And and I think what it is is they grew up knowing that they never had any illusion that art wasn't difficult. They knew that an artistic life was a risky one. They knew that it was it involved a lot of failure, you know, to get to the one success.
Andrew Peterson:And they knew that, like, that making something means pushing through the the discouragement, and pushing through the part of the process that feels like this is a waste of time. Because on the other side of that trough is the satisfaction of having finished something. So that's the thing that I see is that, like, I'm reminded looking at my kids now, oh, if I'm gonna write this book, it's not gonna be fun for long stretches.
Brian Williams:Yeah. And it's But
Andrew Peterson:you do that once
Brian Williams:the passion ebbs, isn't it? It's like pushing through once the passion ebbs. Because you can have the passion and inspiration to start. And then at some point in time, there is a kind of element of, like, workaday craft that has to You come know? And I think sometimes my my experience having lived around musicians and artists for a long time, sometimes once that passion is gone, if there's not a kind of perseverance to push through the craft, then it doesn't result in much.
Brian Williams:Or or, you know, what I've also seen, I'm sure you've seen this too, my friend Greg Wolf will often say piety is no substitute for craft. And it's like you might have a passion and you might wanna put three crosses on a hill, but you can't actually paint. Or you might have a, you know, a real something you wanna you wanna explain to people, but you don't actually know how to write a story. Right? Both of those, once that ebbs, like, without the actual craft, it seems like you you don't get the the the beautiful finished product.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. But the only way to get to the craft is to is to to paint a lot of bad wooden crosses on hills. You know I mean? Like, you've gotta have permission first to to fail at this and to to figure it out. And, you know, that can be the only problem with with harping too hard on the excellence of your work because it's like Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Finishing finishing a mediocre project is more important in my mind than not finishing a great one. Does that make sense? So actually actually
Brian Williams:Explain that. Explain that.
Andrew Peterson:I mean that that, like, so many people probably have a strong sense of what a great book is, and they're like, I wanna also be an author, and they'll sit down to write, and then they get disillusioned because they realize that this book is not as good as they wanted it to be, or as good as the book that they just finished reading, and they never finish the thing. And so as a result, they don't get they don't inch closer to the only way to really understand storytelling is to to fight your way through a mediocre story, get to the end, write the last scene, and then stand back and look at this artifact and go, oh, now I see. Now I see how to do it better next time. Or now I see how to go back and rewrite the story second draft. So I think that there can be a little bit there can be so much emphasis on on making something excellent that what's what gets lost in that conversation is that every great writer wrote a ton of terrible stuff before they
Brian Williams:got to the
Andrew Peterson:good stuff. So you Yeah. You gotta sign up for the the the long work of so and and I think that's the good the good thing too is because you can you need to separate out your expectation of worldly success or this becoming a career from, I I just wanna get good at being a writer, and worry about that other stuff later, so it relieves the pressure. So Jamie and I are starting I've been a gardener for a long time, and but just kind of a hobby gardener. Like, I, you know, have a garden right outside here and love it.
Andrew Peterson:Flower gardening and wannabe English garden kind of thing. And but I've never I've I've always just like gone to the store and bought the flowers and put them in the ground, you know? Yep. And that's pretty expensive. So this year is our first year to have a greenhouse, and we're starting with seed packets and seeds, and we're learning to do the thing.
Andrew Peterson:And like within ten minutes of starting, I remember we planted the seeds in the seed tray, and we did it in the wrong order, and we realized that we were gonna have to, like, arrange the label sticks in a funny way, and we're like, what a rookie move. You know? And so but Jamie and I, like, we're we're watching our stuff grow. We're realizing, oh, man, that they're getting too long. We probably didn't have the light low enough.
Andrew Peterson:But but at 50 now, I know this is gonna this is the first year. This is the first time we're trying this, and we're just gonna get better at it. And, you know, I've noticed that about gardening too, is that, like, I don't know what exactly I'm doing differently than I did fifteen years ago, but the stuff I plant grows better now than it used to. And so Yeah. Iteration just like your body kind of learns something.
Andrew Peterson:And so Yeah. I don't know. I just I just would love for people out there to know that art is work. Don't expect your work to be great. It most of us are never gonna write a great novel, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to write a novel.
Brian Williams:Yeah. And I think that's really encouraging words for, you know, the the junior high kid, the high school kid, you know, the the college kid, and and the adult to say, you know, if you if you got a passion for this, yeah, pursue it. Kind of give yourself to to the craft without worrying about producing the kind of great great work work of art. Did you have somebody tell you that message? I'm like, did you have somebody speak into young Andrew Peterson's life in junior high or high school when you were playing around with music with your buddies and say, man, just give yourself to this, or did you not need that?
Brian Williams:Were you pretty driven as a as a young musician?
Andrew Peterson:I was very driven as a as a young, very lame musician. And, you know, when I was younger, I thought I was all that. I thought I was so great. But I just it just took me a long time to kinda learn this. Jimmy Abeg, who played with Rich Mullins Yep.
Andrew Peterson:One one time And
Brian Williams:Sean Peacock. Right? I I think of him with respect to Charlie Peacock. Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Yeah. And Jimmy is great. He's a great player, but he's also a wonderful painter. But he said, as long as you're making something oh, no.
Andrew Peterson:Oh, no. I'm gonna forget it exactly. Wait a second. As long as you're making something, failure is a word that has no meaning. As long as you're making something, failure is a word that has no meaning.
Andrew Peterson:And I I think that that's great. I I I just I love the idea that, like, you're just the very act of sitting down to try to write a poem, matter how good or bad it is Yeah.
Brian Williams:Is a
Andrew Peterson:tiny way of pushing back at the darkness.
Brian Williams:Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. What do you mean by that? Pushing back the darkness?
Brian Williams:Well, I just mean that, like Yeah. What's the darkness?
Andrew Peterson:Well, I I mean the fact that there is an enemy of our souls who wants to silence us, who wants to to blow out the the spark that that God has put in us to make, and to, like we were saying earlier, to make the world around us Yeah. Our best guess of what the kingdom of God might look like one day Yeah. In its fullness.
Brian Williams:Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:And so and I think that that the way we do that is not towering novels, you know? I'm never gonna write a book like Jaber Crow. But guess what? Neither would Wendell Berry have if he hadn't started with a bunch of other books, you know? And and dedicated himself to to the sowing of those seeds.
Andrew Peterson:And so I that's what I mean. I I just think that, like, there's this sense of I feel like it was one of those smart guys like Hans Rukmacher or Mocker Yep. Who's writing I read one a book. I think it's called Art in Action.
Brian Williams:That's what Nicholas Woltersdorf.
Andrew Peterson:That that's it. Yeah. Woltersdorf. Yeah.
Brian Williams:Another all those Yeah. Nicholas Woltersdorf.
Andrew Peterson:All those Dutch guys, you know?
Brian Williams:Yeah. Seriously, they
Andrew Peterson:But but there was a book about I may be remembering this wrong, because this was years ago, but about how museums showed up in the world, like, kinda culturally. This idea that art was elevated and and kinda sequestered off, and they were like people would pay money to go into a museum to see really great art. And that actually was a really bad thing in some ways for smaller communities because people began to think, well, my what's the point of painting if I can't paint like so and so? And where where the arts used to be a very communal thing, you know, like bards and folk singers and and the the person who lives down the road. And I think churches one of the many gifts of the local church is that a church is a great garden where art can grow.
Andrew Peterson:And what and you know, like, remember my kids played at one of the churches we attended for years. The the the person in charge of the music was really generous and invited young people who weren't great to come up and help sing. And what a cool what a cool thing. Like, it's not it's not about how perfect the music is. It's about you stepping in and and serving in this way.
Andrew Peterson:And so as a result, the kids, like, got to cut their teeth on getting up in front of people and making music in this way, and and then later. That's why I remember noticing years ago that how many of the singers on American Idol learned to sing in church. Yep. You know? Yep.
Andrew Peterson:And so it's like it's kinda like God knows what he's doing. He know he knows how to how to draw out of his people these good and beautiful light giving works.
Brian Williams:And that's what you would expect. I mean, you you would expect the church to be a kind of community where the arts and making like that are nurtured, if in fact that's how God made us to be, going back to Robert for our cape on, and if, in fact, beauty and the arts are good for us just given the nature that we have. You would expect the church to go, this is a great gift for our kinda comfort and consolation and actualization of our humanity that God's given us, and churches are great, and I and I think, you know, when they're operating at their best, schools are are the same way because, you know, in the same way that none of those very few of those students taking math in high school are gonna be professional mathematicians. Yeah. Well, you know, it's the same.
Brian Williams:You know, very few of them are gonna be professional artists or singers, but we still teach them We teach them how to make beauty from the inside, and how to see the world, and and how to how to how to love the beauty in the world, and the beauty of God's, you know, creation and the sub creators. And that just seems like deeply human work.
Andrew Peterson:Totally. And I think that not to open up a can of worms, but AI what AI does is it cuts out of the process the the part where the the song that you're trying to write is less about the finished product and more about the the you that you are becoming while you're struggling your way through the song. Like, the the work of art that that is involved in art, the labor involved, is is so important to the process, because God is shaping us through this labor. You know what I mean? He's teaching our hearts something about the way trees work, or the way a a waterfall works, or his creation.
Andrew Peterson:And all of that is bypassed if you just type a prompt into a thing, and what you end up is with a really lame computer generated poem. Somebody just asked me at a university I was at, like, I thought about AI as a tool in songwriting. And I had to like restrain myself because because I I wanted to just go off because it's really frustrating to me. But you know, the the student wasn't I didn't wanna scare them. But he said, my answer to him was, I just want more for you.
Andrew Peterson:I want you to know when you have finished the song and performed it in front of somebody that you wrote this song. You know? That it was it it all happened between a pen and a paper and a guitar or piano, and all these tactile things in the real world, and you get the satisfaction of knowing that. Also, you have been shaped somewhat by the process, and Yeah. And we bypass that at our peril.
Brian Williams:Well, and I sometimes make the difference distinction between, you know, a formative activity and a productive activity, you know? And so many of these kind of things are are formative. And like the artist, they're getting to work, I mean, I have a beautiful hand thrown coffee mug here. You know, the artist, when they were making this, got to play with dirt, and clay, and ceramic, and bits of color, and bits of glass. And so that's formative for us in a way that just like a productive activity, pushing a button, having the thing automatically produced.
Brian Williams:Yeah. That's not formative of the human person in any kind of way.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. It's true.
Brian Williams:I wanna would ask you a few questions just to close, but I wonder if can ask just a question, Andrew, that about something you just said, that you're being formed in in the process. And I just wonder what's when you're when you're writing, say, songs or your memoirs, you're you're you're pretty transparent in some of those. You're transparent about your own some of your own struggles Mhmm. Self doubt, maybe, you know, some of the dark, dark moments in in your your your your own life. I don't wonder how you think about that with with with making of art in general because there's there's it could be.
Brian Williams:Right? Some people feel like, well, art is purely self expression. Right? Some Christian artists feel like, well, no. I need to if I'm making songs, I need to make worship songs for the church.
Brian Williams:And then for for some, I I don't know. It's maybe maybe somewhere in between. But I just I just wonder if you can give us a little window into, like, your own, you know, wrestling through the creation of, say, your memoirs or songs, where when do you feel okay pouring some of your own, you know, kind of story and wrestling with the darkness, if you will, into those those words for other people.
Andrew Peterson:I think I'll steal an answer from Walt Wongren, Jr. Did you ever know him or meet him?
Brian Williams:No, but I've read his stuff. I mean, book of the Duncan, Book of Sorrows, and his book on family. Yeah. His kids were adopted, our kids are adopted, and so, yeah, we resonated with some of his stuff. But, yeah, I've never I've never met him.
Andrew Peterson:He was great. He was a he was an interesting character, but I loved him so much. He was a good friend to the rabbit room. And anyway, he we got to publish a few of his books, and so he he was just so generous. But he spoke at Hutchmead a few times, and and, you know, one of the things that's that's beautiful to me about people like Fredrik Beekner, and I would say Walt Wenger and Junior, is that they they're very, very honest and transparent in their memoirs and in their fiction.
Andrew Peterson:But their memoirs, it comes to a point, and you guys are actually focusing on failures or struggles that they had. Yeah. And Walt, in in his memoirs, Ms. Lill and the Chronicles of Grace is one of his excellent books, where he's this new pastor at a little inner city church in Indianapolis, and he's writing stories about what he learned from the congregation. He's always the fool in the story, in his own story.
Andrew Peterson:He always casts himself as he thought he knew what he was doing, but then his congregation taught him how to love better. Right? Yeah. And it's so it's so moving to me that the the humility involved in that. But somebody asked him at Hutchmoot, when when do you know it's okay to share a story of your own failure or your own struggle?
Andrew Peterson:And Walt's answer was, you have to wait until you're first of all, you're talking about the season in the past tense. Yep. You don't you don't share it publicly when you're in the middle of it. You can write during the middle of it, but he doesn't recommend, like it's one of the bad things about, you know, instant publishing on Substack or whatever, is that we don't have time to like, get get far enough away from it to see God's hand moving in the story. Mhmm.
Andrew Peterson:We're crying out from the center of it, which is okay. Right? But I have to suspect that even the Psalms were curated to some point, you know? Like, there must have been some space of time to make sure that this thing was helpful, and good, and beautiful, and true. And so, I know as a songwriter, there were plenty of times when I was struggling with something that I I wrote a song in the heat of of of sorrow or passion or whatever, and shared it that night at a show and cried.
Andrew Peterson:And you can feel the air get weird in the room. Everybody knows it got weird because all of a sudden, have put an unfair burden on on the audience. They are now my counselor. Trying to get something from them.
Brian Williams:Mhmm.
Andrew Peterson:Rather than being the host of a feast and saying, hey, I have I like, I've got some stories to tell, and I want these stories to to be good for you and edifying for you. And sometimes those stories are really hard, and they're gonna go go to dark places. But that's what I've learned over the years, that that if you're telling the we need to wait long enough to to allow God to be the hero of the story. And we can't really see that he's the hero of the story until until we've gotten past it, and we've seen the arc to a to a to a an extent, and seen his his hand in the thing. And then you get to tell the story of your own desolation with Christ as the hero.
Brian Williams:Well, that that that's real wisdom. Hey. As we as we near the end, Andrew, on Forged, we we attend to the disciplines, delights, crafts, calling that make up a well lived ordinary life. So let me ask you about each one of those, if I could. So what's a discipline you've pursued that has sustained you?
Andrew Peterson:Well, the first thing that comes to mind is what I was talking about the other day, is the the idea of writing the Lenten sonnets. I've been doing it for years now. I don't I don't often feel like sitting down to wrestle a sonnet out. It can take anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours, you know. The point is not to be, you know, sage or amazing.
Andrew Peterson:It's just to give myself the time, hopefully, to think about the crucifixion, to think about Jesus' journey to the cross. And a lot of times, I can't think of anything to write, so I just write a journal entry. But it's it's giving myself space to to be present and to to reflect on on whatever it is that God has for me today, and and then to, you know, with great fear and trembling, share it online with people, so they can kinda go on the journey with me. But but that I it's a good practice for a lot of reasons, but part of it is that it is forcing me to to do the creative work even when I don't feel like it. Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Okay. So so yeah, I think I think that's it. It's like making myself, committing to something that that I I know that I'm not always gonna be in the mood for, but but I'm being held accountable.
Brian Williams:Yeah. Good. What delights you?
Andrew Peterson:Oh, wow. My granddaughter, my my wonderful wife, my kids. We just had all the kids and the spouses and my granddaughter over for dinner last night, and it's just my favorite thing in the world is to get everybody together. What delights me is is gathering in the room that I'm in for a pipe night with my buddies. We'll Yeah.
Andrew Peterson:Hang out in here and, you know, laugh till midnight. And, yeah, I have a fireplace out here, and in the winter, just is perfect. And Yeah. And there's a great CS Lewis quote where he says something like, there's nothing he likes more than the sound of of Christian men laughing by by a fire or something like that. I can't remember the quote exactly.
Andrew Peterson:But I my wife always points out that, like, I I seem so happy when I come into the house after a night with my buddies. But also the the Warren, like, our our property here, especially this time of year, it's it's March right now, and the hyacinths are in bloom. I'm looking out my window right now at the the last remnants of the daffodils. There's so much work to be done, and I just absolutely love it. I feel the most human when I'm rambling around the property, trying to work work and keep what God has entrusted to us.
Brian Williams:Okay. There's discipline, delight. What about a craft? What what craft have you pursued? We've actually discussed, like, 15 that you've pursued, but what, you know, is there is there one that you think, this is a this is a craft maybe I'm still pursuing, or I want to pursue, but when I say, what's what's the what what craft comes to mind as far as you pursue?
Andrew Peterson:I'm trying to learn to paint. And so Okay. I've I've sketched forever and and decent at it, but have been very intimidated by color, and, you know, the kind of all the accoutrements of paint and oils and everything feel has felt like the threshold is just too high. My son is a painter, my son and daughter-in-law are professional illustrators, and so they've kind of been tutoring me. Okay.
Andrew Peterson:And I've just started getting in, like, maybe three, four years ago, started watercolor painting, and then last year, at my friend Russ Ramsey's encouragement, started oil painting. And and I really wanna get good at painting, but I'm really not very good at it yet. And so so I have I have next to my desk my my kind of drafting table over here the a stack of watercolor paper, and I told myself I wasn't going to be hard on myself. I wasn't gonna get discouraged until that stack was about two feet tall. Like, know that I've just gotta iterate and keep painting and painting and painting and keep going.
Andrew Peterson:And and if I still stink when I'm, like, you know, two feet tall tall stack of paintings, then maybe I need to pursue something else. But the cool thing is that
Brian Williams:Nana, wise friend, once told me that as long as you're making, failure has no meaning, so just keep at it.
Andrew Peterson:Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There it is. But yeah.
Andrew Peterson:So I the cool thing is that, like, when you keep that stack by your desk, can go back to the first painting Yeah. And and see progress. And so I so I really would love in my old age to get good at plein air painting, and and I I love it so much. That's great. My son, Aidan, I've said this before, but he I'd been on the road a lot a couple years ago and my son was he told me that he was gonna check-in on me.
Andrew Peterson:Was like, I hadn't heard from you in a while. Just wanna make sure you're okay. I know you've been out there on the road, and and I was about to text you, and then I saw that you posted on Instagram that you were sketching somewhere in the woods, and I knew you were okay.
Brian Williams:You were okay? That's funny.
Andrew Peterson:So my kid kinda like was the one who pointed out something that I was like, oh, I didn't realize that about myself. But the truth is that if I am finding time to go sit outside and stare at a flower or a tree and try to sketch it, that I'm probably in a pretty good place. I'm communing with my Lord in a in a healthy way.
Brian Williams:That's good. So Discipline, Delight, Craft. And Andrew Peterson, what's your calling?
Andrew Peterson:Oh, wow. I I think I think it's to the way I usually put it is that I wanna tell the truth as beautifully as I can. Mhmm.
Brian Williams:That's that that's lovely. Hey. I like to close by asking people if there's a our guests, if there's a poem or a paragraph or a single sentence or passage that has become important for them over the years or understanding their vocation, whatever it happens to be. Did did you select a passage?
Andrew Peterson:I did. So I was torn between two things. There was this book, The Force of a Story, which is Windleberry's most recent and possibly final oh, you've got it right there. Awesome.
Brian Williams:Got it right
Andrew Peterson:here. Have you you read it yet?
Brian Williams:No. I haven't read it yet. I teach Hanna Pulitzer every every every semester, and so I'm a big Windleberry fan. But I haven't read
Andrew Peterson:this book. I love him. I love him. I I thought I would read this in there. I'm also torn between this and his poem, The Peace of Wild Things.
Andrew Peterson:Both of them you know, almost everything that Wendell Berry writes is kinda coming at the same thing from a different angle. And it reminds me I remember one of my Bible college professors was talking about preaching, and he said that every sermon every pastor really has the same sermon they're preaching over and over. And it gets to that that idea you were talking about earlier, like there's some some secret about the heart of God that each of us gets to reveal to our brethren in the George McDonald sense. But a lot of what Wendell Berry writes about is that just the the grief of the brokenness of creation and the the way that communities have broken down, the way our lack of care for what God has entrusted to us has has had downstream really heartbreaking effects. I've said before that one of the best ways to love your neighbor is to take good care of creation.
Andrew Peterson:And so I at the end of this Wendell Berry book, I was texting with Russell Moore. I don't know if you know Russell, but he's a a dear friend, and I told him I was reading Mars Catlett, and he said, I bet you I bet you'll cry at the exact same place that I cried at. And I I texted him the day I finished, and I said, was it page one fifty? And he said, yep.
Brian Williams:That's great.
Andrew Peterson:And so so I'll read a paragraph from that. Yeah. And it might not might not move you guys out there, but but this is Andy Catlett writing near the end of his life, just looking back at all of the kind of sadness that he's experienced in the in the the kind of rumination of creation and community. But it's beautiful. Listen to this.
Andrew Peterson:The history of the Port William countryside, like that of the world since 1492, has included so much disgrace and destruction that the continuation so far of the life of it, and of the beauty still of so much of it, seems to Andy to be a wonder almost equal to the wonder of its creation in the beginning. It is a wonder to him that he and his people have been spared so far the just consequence of their folly. He thinks that a great patience and a great forgiveness must so far have been in force, and he gives thanks. The idea that the continuation of the goodness and the beauty of God's world in spite of what we have done to it is a miracle almost as amazing as the the creation itself. Mhmm.
Andrew Peterson:And the idea that a great patience and a great forgiveness has been kind of hovering over the world all this time Mhmm. Is so moving to me. And I think it's true. I I especially, it's it's comforting to know that when I watch the news, and I see images of the war that's happening right now, and and the the just the insanity that seems to be everywhere. And when I walk outside, and I see that Hyacinth are still faithful to their maker, they're still coming up in bloom, that spring is still preaching its sermon of the resurrection like it has in this part of the world since before people lived here.
Andrew Peterson:I I just think that that's testimony to the fact that there is a great patience and forgiveness that we can count on. So amen Wendell Berry.
Brian Williams:Amen Wendell Berry. And I think with that, we'll we'll we'll leave it there. So thank you, Andrew, for spending time with us on Forged. I've been talking with Andrew Peterson about stewarding songs and stories and shepherding singers and storytellers and feasting on God's good creation. So thank you.
Brian Williams:I'm grateful, for this conversation. Friend, you've been listening to Forged with Brian Williams, a podcast of the Humanitas Institute about forging well lived ordinary lives of discipline, delight, craft, calling. Thanks again, folks.