Episode 27: Andrew Peterson: Trees! All Things New
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations
Season Two of Bridges is brought to you by our friends at Food for the Hungry, meeting the physical and spiritual needs of people all over the world for over 40 years.
Patsy: Speaking of friends and meeting needs, our guest today does both of those things in a major way. He has a poetic heart, he has a musical pen, he has a grand imagination, and he has a real heart for gardening and trees. And his name is…
Andrew: Andrew Peterson, an incredible singer, songwriter, author, really creative extraordinaire, and he has written the new book The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom. Speaking of gardens, this is a lovely conversation with a lovely person that I feel every time we talk with him it’s so invitational in the way he speaks but also so informational. I get both sides of the coin with Andrew Peterson, and I’m so glad that he’s in the studio with us today. Listen in.
Patsy: We can’t have a conversation until we build a bridge.
Andrew: Absolutely.
Patsy: But actually, we don’t have to bring the material for that because our guest has already done that. And it is the material that was for the first bridges ever built, and that’s a tree. When a tree fell across a river, it helped people go from this place to that place, and if there wasn’t one available, they soon found one.
So even though we’re not cutting down trees, we’re encouraging you to plant them and to see the significance for your life. We’re thrilled to have our guest, and you’re going to tell them more about him, aren’t you?
Andrew: Gladly. Andrew Peterson is in the house today. Of course, Andrew you’re a singer, a songwriter, and I put those together because you’re more than just a singer. You’re singer-songwriter and author. I mean, fantasy, tour person, performer. You’re a great thinker.
Actually, I would say my connecting point with you would be your thoughts. In research of this conversation, I listen to other podcasts, other interviews of you, and I find it a very soothing and healing thing. So I do think, all in all, you have a lot of healing components about you, but Andrew, welcome to the table.
Andrew Peterson: Thank you so much.
Patsy: And I love that he dips his pen in the ink of his heart before he presses in on the page because it resonates and sings into our hearts.
Andrew: It does. And the recent ink-pressing that you’ve been a part of is The God of the Garden, which just released. So tress is kind of the impetus and, of course, things of the natural world.
We know that trees have a lot of spiritual significance, just in the language like you’ve written about in the book — language around the garden, around the natural world, calls us into the spiritual realm. But what is the spiritual significance for you? What is your connection with trees?
Andrew Peterson: Yeah. Well, this book was a way of trying to get to the bottom of that, and so when I was kicking around what to write about… And you know, the thing came out of COVID. It was like I got booted off the road in March of 2020 and knew I wasn’t going to play any shows for a year, which was a mixed blessing because I’d been praying for a sabbatical. Just tired. Twenty-some odd years of touring pretty constantly.
And so I feel somewhat responsible for the pandemic because this was an answer to prayer, but I got to be home for all that time. And we live in the country on some property that I love to take care of, and this was the first time I’d ever had the space to take care of it without a sense of urgency.
Usually, you’re gone for a weekend of shows, you come back. If it’s not raining, I’ve got to mow fast because I’m leaving Thursday. But this time it was like this wide open runway of just exploring the place, taking care of it, and in the middle of that was when my publisher of Adorning the Dark said, “Hey, you want to write another book?” And I was like, “Well, I’ve got nothing else to do basically.” And so I started thinking about what I would want to write about, and I think a good way to start is to look at what you’ve been reading, like what has been fascinating you for the last few years. And I have been reading books about trees, so many books about trees.
Andrew: Did you even realize that at that point, until you took stock?
Andrew Peterson: No. I mean, I realized that I was interested in kind of agrarian concerns, which started with Wendell Berry and paying attention to community and the breakdown of community because of the way that we do things here, the way we don't really steward the land terribly well, and the theological implications on that, like what that says about what we believe about who God is and what people are for, to steal a Wendell Berry phrase.
So yes, I had been reading a lot about that, mainly because I have a heart for the UK. I really love the placeness of the UK. They’re better at it than we are I think because it’s an older culture, so the name of a field or village goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. So I feel like when I’m there, I’m more awake to it, and there tends to be a lot of writing about that stuff over there.
So I started reading all these books about trees and forests, and then that led to The Hidden Life of Trees. Peter Wohlleben, I think, is his name. Read that and a couple others, and I began to think about trees that I have always loved, and that began to unlock memories for me.
Before I started writing the book, I started asking people, “Hey, what are your favorite trees? Do you have any trees that jog your memory?” So are you guys ready for an experiment that might go not well? Are there any trees that stand out from your childhood?
Patsy: I remember my mother being passionate about trees, and we would go on vacation and she would say, “Patsy, look at this tree over here?” And I would be on a feather bed on the floorboard reading comic books. “Yeah, mom, I see it.” Finally, I said, “You see one tree, you’ve seen them all.”
And then one day the childish little curtain rose up and I saw trees, and I have been all about trees ever since, even named part of my ministry, Shaking Your Tree, in that I help people find their tree memories as well as many others for the purpose of developing a growth in creative expression. So I’m very excited about trees. Did you read how trees talk to each other under God?
Andrew Peterson: No, no. Are you talking about in The Hidden Life of Trees? How there’s this whole community.
Patsy: Yes.
Andrew Peterson: They communicate with each other in ways that we’re just now understanding. It’s amazing. It’s so cool to me.
Patsy: Yes, yes. That is.
Andrew: It’s a huge thing of wonder, I mean, in the root systems talking to each other.
I grew up in I call it the fringe of west Texas. I’ve been challenged about this a lot because I was just west of Fort Worthy going toward Abilene, and so they call that central Texas, but it had that very flat, plains-y. And mesquite is what I first remember in the way it grows and the way…
So as a result of the trees I loved, it enhanced the sky I’ve always been in love with because we weren’t very crowded in the part of Texas I grew up in as far as the landscape. It was very, very open.
When I hit that place though, when I hit the land whenever I go visit, and the mesquite start coming out and the land starts broadening and the sky starts getting bigger, I instantly feel safe.
Andrew Peterson: Isn’t that cool?
Andrew: As if I belong. I think trees, I think nature, I think we’re a part of nature, right? Maybe that’s the balance of it is that this is not just separate, we’re not humans and this is nature. Well, take us back to Eden, right?
Andrew Peterson: Yeah, and that was one of the things that lit me up when I was thinking about all this is that I started out thinking about trees in my own childhood and how many memories I have that are significant that, if I was in the little video camera in my mind, you could swing the camera around and there would always be some tree that I would remember kind of standing there keeping watch.
Patsy: Oh, I love that thought. That’s a great visual.
Andrew Peterson: Yeah, it’s pretty cool, right?
And the BibleProject, which is a ministry I love, they have this podcast series called “Tree of Life.” It’s 10 episodes long, and they just do this biblical survey of trees in the Bible. And they start out by talking about the Genesis account and how it’s broken up into two sections. I never knew this. But days one through three mirror days four, five, and six. You can learn more about that on your own. But on day three, the significant thing that’s created is trees, and God says, “I’m going to make trees, and they’re going to bear fruit.” And on day six, he makes people and says, “Bear fruit.”
And so right out of the gate, there’s this correlation between people and trees. And so they point out that if you read Scripture that way, trees end up being this thematic picture of what God is doing in us. Like Psalm 1 opens with that verse about people being like trees, a man feeding on God’s Word. The cross is referred to as a tree in Acts. We talk about being cut off or unrooted. And then Jesus, of course, goes on and on about bearing fruit. And so it changes the way you read Scripture.
They have suggest, they’re like, go through and read the Bible with a highlighter. Get a green one, and highlight it every time a tree is mentioned.
Patsy: It’s a lot. It’s a forest in there.
Andrew Peterson: Trees are mentioned more often than any other living thing other than people and God. It’s this cool fact.
So I thought my book was going to be about that, and then I realized I’m not a Bible scholar. I’m more of a memoirist, so I kinda used that as the impetus to go, Okay, how have trees been a picture of God’s presence in my own life? And that led to all kinds of thoughts about creation and culture and gardening as a way of healing grief.
It’s what we were made for, right? And in the last hundred years or so, our culture here in the West at least, we’re very disconnected from the land.
I was just telling somebody the other day, I was at this Wendell Berry conference, and Norman Wirzba, who was kind of this agrarian theologian guy, he had this room full of people who were already into farming things, and he said, “Raise your hand if your grandparents were farmers.” And almost the whole room raised their hands.
My grandmother was a farmer, my grandpa, a dairy farmer in Florida. And then he goes, “Okay, put your hands down. Raise your hands if your parents are farmers.” And half the room put their hand up. He said, “Raise your hand if you are a farmer.” And like four people… And it was just this really jarring realization that even among people who are into this stuff, there’s this massive disconnect from it.
And Jesus, so many things that he talks about, he uses metaphors from creation to help us understand what God is like.
Andrew: Well, and I don’t know if I want to go here, but what that makes me think about is the current scenario we’ve found ourselves in over the past going on a couple years now. I think all kinds of people have been curious about our response, regardless of how you feel about anything about it, just how are we responding as humans to it. There was a very sharp response at first, right? It doesn’t matter about the response, just being curious about that.
But I heard someone say that some of the acuteness of our response in the fear factor could be due to our lack of connection to the ground, meaning we haven’t had our hands… I haven’t had to help produce that tomato, which really is me just planting it and surrendering the rest to I would say God, but that’s the weather, that’s the environment, that’s the climate, and then trusting that I’ll have food for myself and my family.
We’re so far disconnected from that process, which is so much a part of us, that it’s caused this…
Andrew Peterson: It makes you realize how much we depend on these structures, and so when those structures get kind of shaken, you’re like, Oh my, what do we do if everything goes south? It’s an unsettling feeling.
And the thing is not everybody has to be a farmer. I think a lot of it is just learning to pay attention to the given world. What is there to learn about who God is and who we are by paying attention to the book of nature?
Which one of the things that I learned was that, you know, the ancient Christians used to talk about how there are two books of Revelation. There’s the book of Scripture and there’s the book of nature. Both of them tell us about who God is, and we’re not terribly good at paying attention to the book of nature these days.
I remember hearing during COVID, during the lockdown, that one of the biggest Google searches was “why are the birds so loud.”
Patsy: Oh, that’s funny.
Andrew Peterson: Isn’t that so funny? And it’s like, well, the birds didn’t get any louder, folks.
Patsy: You’re finally listening.
Andrew Peterson: Right. And there were fewer distractions, and we began to see that, oh, there’s all of this music all around us. We’re just missing it.
Patsy: Which, for me, is such joy. I love the birds. I love the trees.
We have some pine trees, and they’re not very well and they’re telling me they’re gonna have to go. I grieve if a tree has to go. It just really disturbs me.
But when I was in Michigan, I grew up around a lot of evergreens, so they’re a favorite of mine. But I had gardens and things grew, but I got here and I plant and it dies. It doesn’t reach maturity. I’m gonna come over and still your soil. It’s gotta be your soil.
Andrew Peterson: No, no.
Patsy: I’ve had mine amended and prayed over.
Andrew Peterson: It’s maddening, isn’t it? The thing is I feel so much of that same frustration.
You’re probably like me — the beginning of spring you’re like, Gardening is the greatest thing in the world. And in August in Tennessee, I hate it. It’s so aggressive, and the deer come through and eat everything that I was growing.
Again, this is the picture of… We get the sense that this is not the way it’s meant to be. We’re meant to put things in the ground, and it’s supposed to work. Things don’t work like they’re supposed to.
Andrew: Listen, guys. You all are willing to go there in the spring. I don’t challenge myself. I’ve got these perennials. They come back year after year. They’re beautiful. You guys, you’re struggling, you know. That’s why my belief in God is more settled than yours.
But I want to come back to talking here in a minute about what we learn through gardening in the sense of learning to grieve and to grow through suffering.
Right now, you’re listening with our good friend Andrew Peterson. You are…
Patsy: Patsy Clairmont, the Boomer.
Andrew: Boom, boom. I’m Andrew Greer, the Millennial. We’ll be right back.
Food for the Hungry Sponsorship Message
Patsy: Food for the Hungry is giving us a wonderful way to take God’s Word and invest it all over the world, and we get to be a part of it. It will deepen their spiritual experience, it will help in literacy issues, it will bring light into dark places, and we can do it all if you will help us help others. And how do we do that, Andrew?
Andrew: It’s pretty simple. Our friends at Food for the Hungry are giving us a unique opportunity to purchase Bibles for folks all around the world, and here’s the cool part, Patsy. It’s translated, ready to go, ready to read in their language, and that’s a rare thing around the world.
So go to fh.org/briges, and for $12 a pop, you can buy as many Bibles as you want to help our friends know God better and read better across the world. Go to fh.org/bridges.
The Abide Bible Sponsorship Message
Patsy: “Shout out praises to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with joy. Enter his presence with joyful singing. Acknowledge that the Lord is God. He made us and we belong to him; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”
That’s Psalms 100, verses 1 and 2, from my own Abide Bible.
When we abide him and his words abide in us, everything changes — our perspective, our attitude. So it anchors my soul when I go to the Word of God. It teaches me better behavior than I’d have otherwise because I can really suffer from a case of the attitude. So this helps to keep me in a better place with a sweeter attitude in a difficult world.
The Abide Bible comes in two different versions. I don’t know if you have a favorite, but there’s a New King James and then there’s the New English translation. It is set up so you can journal, so those of you who love to do notes on the side, this paper is set up to receive those notes. It also gives you insights on the edges of the pages that help us to read the Word in a more meaningful way, to meditate in such a way that it begins to sink into the very depths of our being, to pray the verse so that we get better claim on the truth in it, and then to contemplate so that as we move forward the Word goes with us.
So that is what I want to tell you about the Abide Bible because I believe in passing on the Good News.
Andrew: We have been talking about the Abide Bible throughout the entire Bridges broadcast, but one new way to highlight your experience of reading the Bible is a free 21-day video devotional series called Experience Abide. It’s an incredible way for people to experience the Bible themselves and adds a free benefit to your own spiritual growth, and so we are excited to offer not only the Bible but this free Experience Abide devotional series straight from bridgesshow.com/abide.
Patsy: I was reading all the different kinds of flowers that are growing at your house. They are not growing at my house. What are your favorites, and what are your secrets?
Andrew Peterson: Oh man, that’s a good question. The first secret is that I have a friend who is a gardener. That’s a big part of it.
I talk about it in the book, but her name’s Julie, she lives in Pennsylvania, and she has, I think, an English gardener certificate. So she’s way into it and had come out to our house for something and had seen… You know, one of the hard things about living on property, because we have a few acres, is you don’t know where to start.
When I walk through downtown Franklin and I see these cute little yards, it’s like there’s this picture frame that you can work inside of. And we didn't have that, so she sent us the gift of a 30-year garden plan. She drew up this big schematic, little bubbles of color and then a list of every kind of flower we would need.
And when you’re really good at gardening, which I’m not, you’re thinking about which thing is blooming at which time of year, how tall it’s gonna be at which time of year so that there’s this constant rotation of color and things to expect. And that is like a math problem I cannot do. I’m learning slowly how to do it, but for starters, she gave me the list, and she was like, “I’ve researched. These are the things that should grow in Tennessee.” And she thought through the colors. And she knows that I have this seasonal affective disorder, you know, get super depressed in the winter, so she was very conscious to plant things that would have color in very, very early spring to give me a little bit of hope that I needed to get to full spring. So that’s it.
So lots of bulbs. I put in a lot of tulips and daffodils. Daffodils love Tennessee, so put plenty of those in the ground. But flower-wise, I love peonies. Spring flowers are my favorite. I love spring so much because it feels like the answer to a prayer that winter has been praying.
So yeah, lots of that kind of stuff. What else do we have?
“I love spring so much because it feels like the answer to a prayer that winter has been praying.”
Patsy: So it’s therapy for ya?
Andrew Peterson: Oh yeah, yeah. And I didn’t know that when I started. It wasn’t until later that I figured that out.
Andrew: I mean, it’s very practical. It takes you back to the practical nature of connecting with the earth.
When I have been in intense counseling, intense seasons of counseling before, where I really needed help immediately, it still was a process of practical things that would be what we tried before we got to the more intense things. And that usually was drink less caffeine, have normal sleep hours, get outside.
You even talk about your friend, how she designed the garden, or your plan, with the idea of seasonal affective disorder that you experience in the winter, and many others do too, to give you a pop of color. So I want to get into you’re one of the best people to talk to about being vulnerable about sorrow and about grief, experiencing it but not necessarily just dwelling in it, living in it, staying in it. Like you said, winter is the prayer for spring that spring is coming — you have that hope in you too.
So how has the process of gardening, and you can be as specific as you want or go wherever you want with this. How has it cultivated within you the ability to grieve well so that you continue to point to hope?
Andrew Peterson: Wow. All I can tell you is a story to answer the question, and that is that probably the deepest, longest season of grief that I experienced was around the time I turned 40, early 40s, and there was a whole bunch of reasons that a counselor kind of helped me sift through for it.
When you’re in a depression or you’re in a season of pain, the lie that we believe is that this is how it is always going to be. That feeling. That’s typically how you feel, that you cannot see an end in sight, which is a definition of despair is that you believe that there is no good end to the story.
And so a storyteller, you know, with my novels and stuff, you learn a lot about how that works. You actually put your characters in a corner, and you make them feel like that’s the truth. And you make the reader feel like there’s no good end to the story, and then they’re like, But there’s 60 pages left. Something’s going to happen. And then you get the great joy as the author of their story of saying, “No, look. This is what I had in mind all along.”
Patsy: A daffodil pops up.
Andrew Peterson: Yes, exactly. And I think there’s something very Christian — I think that’s the word I mean — about that kind of story because that is the story that God is telling. That’s kind of like the medium he works in really well.
So gardening is another kind of storytelling. You’re actually embodying hope by getting on your knees in the dead of winter or late fall and kind of vouchsafing your hope into the ground. You’re entrusting the ground with this thing that you’re going, I can’t believe that this is gonna actually work, but in April, something good is coming. And so we actually learn to practice, like as Wendell Berry once again says, practice resurrection. It’s a way of embodying this story that all of creation is telling all the time.
And so just a week ago, I have a friend who is struggling with depression. I invited them out to my house and I had bought a bag of bluebells, probably Texas bluebells. I’m not exactly sure what kind they were, but I love bluebells. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a bluebell wood, but my goodness, when there’s just millions of them. They come early, so the leaves on the trees aren’t out yet, but you just see this sea of purple and blue. It’s purple.
Anyway, I said, “Hey, we’re gonna plant some bluebells in the ground.” And they got on their knees, and I would dig the hole, and they would put these things in the ground. And I was like, “It’s hard to believe that this little thing has beauty in it and you’re gonna put it in the ground, and some invisible work is gonna be happening. Come back in April, and we’re gonna celebrate together the fact that something good came.”
And so it’s one thing to know that academically. Yes, I know things are gonna get better. It’s another thing to actually embody it and to have a practice in your life that reminds your actual body in a way that you can actually see with your own eyes that this is actually how it works. This is actually the way that God does it. It’s irreplaceable. You can only know by doing really.
“Gardening is another kind of storytelling.”
Patsy: That’s really what your gardening is about. It’s practicing resurrection, isn’t it? You’re on your knees. You’re working in the dirt. You’re putting something in the ground that looks nothing like what you’re hoping for.
Andrew Peterson: Looks useless and dead.
Patsy: And suddenly.
Andrew Peterson: Not so suddenly actually, you know? It’s like it feels sudden when you look back. You’re like, Wow, spring is here. But man, when you’re in it, it’s like, When is this gonna change? You just feel this… I feel terribly impatient in late winter, and you get these little hints of it, but then it’s like, oh man, here comes another forecast of freezing rain or whatever. So it can feel like it takes so long, but with the benefit of hindsight and time — sorry, I’m getting excited. I’m talking so much, but I’ve been thinking a lot about time and how gardening teaches us to befriend time.
We tend to think of time as an enemy because we’re in these bodies that are dying and we see the kind of breakdown of things. And you leave a house alone for a year and earth starts to reach up and pull it back down, and you’re always fighting it, you know?
But one of the beautiful things to me about the new creation, this idea that will have bodies that don’t die. Suddenly, 800 years is a blast, and you’re like, I’m gonna put this acorn in the ground, and I’m gonna be around to see the oak. And so suddenly, time becomes this joyful thing instead of this enemy that we feel like we’re always fighting against.
So gardening, when you start out with annuals or whatever, you start small, but eventually, once you get into trees, now I’m putting trees in the ground and I’m thinking, Oh, cool. In 10 years, it’s gonna fill that space right there. I’m gonna rack the leaves up under the maple tree for the grandkids or whatever. It changes the way you see time too. So it teaches you patience. It just goes on forever.
Andrew: The lessons are endless.
Don’t talk to my mom about the tree and 10 years later. She planted a tree when my oldest brother was 10, planning for it to provide shade by the time he came back from college. It’s still not providing shade, but anyway. I think that has to do with strategy where it was planted. It is living all these years later.
Talk about when we’re in it. You’re talking about inviting your friend over to be a part of the process of planting and to dig in, literally. A part of being in it is a wrestling with God I think, and you’ve said to me before in conversations, and I’ve heard you say it to others, that really, in your history with God and getting to know Jesus — don’t let me put words in your mouth — you were frightened of God. And I think while that sounds really dynamic to say out loud, I don’t think it’s as unique as we make it out to be, so I want you to talk about what that meant for you and is that still true sometimes.
Andrew Peterson: That’s a good question. I actually get into this in The God of the Garden a little bit. Have you ever heard of Lectio Divina? It’s a kind of praying.
Patsy: Yes.
Andrew Peterson: I didn’t grow up in a church situation that ever practiced anything Latin, but our pastor came over to our house. We were kind of hosting some kind of small group situation at our house, and he was like, “Hey, we’re gonna do this thing. We’re gonna read a passage.” I think you read a passage three times through, and after each time you read it, you kind of sit in silence, and you kind of pray over it and ask yourself which word is popping out. Which character in the story am I thinking of? And so it’s this measured way of praying.
The passage was the passage about Jesus blessing the little children, and we read it three times through. Afterward, he was like, “Let’s talk about it. What came to mind? Where did you see yourself in that story?” And I couldn’t talk because I saw myself in that story as a little boy that was too terrified to approach the Rabbi.
I had this whole little movie play out in my head, and it was my parents going, “No, go up there.” And I was like, “Uh uh. Uh uh.” I was terrified to go forward. Not because he seemed scary but because I was terrified that he would really see me and the chance that he would not be angry but he would just look at me and be kind of disappointed. And so my tendency is to hide, to lean away, hide behind the legs of all the grownups. While all the other kids are so freely going up to receive the blessing, I couldn’t do it.
I was like, Whoa. What does that say about me and how I see Jesus? I wish I had my book with me. I would read the sonnet, but I ended up writing a sonnet about it that is in the book, just trying to get to the bottom of it. And I think by the time I’d finished this book… You know, you write a book, you don’t really know what it’s about. But again and again, I was confronted with God and Christ’s abiding presence, just a kind of quiet presence, like one of those trees that’s keeping watch.
I would experience some painful thing in my life and think I was alone and then look and see this shadow over me that’s like, Hey, I’m still here. By the time I got to the end of the story, and I’m spoiling it completely for you, was when I went to the garden, the real Garden of Gethsemane, about four years ago. And you know, who knows if it’s actually where it was, but it was near there, and these olive trees are a thousand years old, so chances are at least we’re close to where Jesus prayed the night that he was taken in a grove of trees, as best as we can tell, on the Mount of Olives. Once again, here’s this significant moment in Scripture where trees are present.
And I went there, and I remember reaching through the fence. There’s a protective fence, but I touched the bark of this olive tree and read Psalm 22 aloud to myself, just because I wanted to fully be present to what Jesus was feeling. That’s the “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm. That Jesus wasn’t just saying those words. Some people suggest that he was basically saying the title of a whole song. This is what I’m experiencing while I’m here. And that ends with, Look at what the Lord has done. He’s so good, and he’s done this great thing, and we’re gonna make this great thing known among the nations.
And so I was there just wrestling with that and understood Jesus’ agony in a way that I hadn’t ever understood it before. Man, I just had a sense that he loved me in a way that I’d never experienced. And I remember just standing up kind of like, Whoa, that was intense, and standing off to the side and just burst into tears. I was standing there crying. And the thought that I kept having was, He actually loves me. I can’t believe he loves me. He would do this? I can’t believe it.
And so in my mind, I had the guts in that moment to push my way through the legs of all the grownups and let him see me and put his hand on my head and give me the blessing that was always mine.
And so I think that’s what it comes down to is not just believing that Jesus loves you but allowing him to love you. Like it’s true. Yes, he’s standing there and he has got this great love for you, and now it’s up to you. Just let him put his hand on your head and bless you. And that, to me, is the hardest part is just being seen and known and receiving that love because it’s just so hard to believe.
Andrew Peterson singing “It Is Well With My Soul” with Cindy Morgan and Andrew Greer
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought
My sin, not in part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul
It is well (it is well)
With my soul (with my soul)
It is well, it is well with my soul
Patsy: Andrew, I understand, word is out, that you do another podcast with a friend of ours. Tell us about that.
Andrew: Mr. Mark Lowry, who was a guest on this podcast. He’s my co-host for Dinner Conversations with Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer. We have a ton of fun talking about all kinds of topics around the table, and you can find them at dinner-conversations.com.
Do you know something that we both love a lot of, Patsy?
Patsy: What’s that?
Andrew: That’s books.
Patsy: Food
Andrew: That too. But I hear you have a book club.
Patsy: I do have a book club. It’s called Porch Pals Book Club, and you can find out more about the book club by going to patsyclairmont.com.
Food for the Hungry Sponsorship Message
Patsy: Food for the Hungry is giving us a wonderful opportunity. I’m so glad that they have put this program into effect because of the literacy issue around the world, and this is going to help tackle that, plus bring the light of Christ into the lives of children that will be spread throughout the villages and the homes and the hearts of people. I love it. I love it. Tell us more.
Andrew: We have been given the opportunity, through our friends at Food for the Hungry, to purchase Bibles for people in communities around the world. The beauty of these Bibles is that they come ready to read. No matter where these folks are — that may be a community in Bolivia or Cambodia or Haiti or Kenya — all across the world, these Bibles are translated in their native tongue, which we think of being able to procure a Bible anytime we want, either through our technological devices or going to a bookstore, picking one up, or Amazon. It’s not as easily or readily available to other communities that are more rural and more impoverished around the world.
And so, of course, Food for the Hungry has been committed for decades to not only meeting the physical needs of people around the world, and of course, we helped do that through chickens last season. This season we’re getting to complete their mission, and that is meet the spiritual needs through the offering of a Bible.
So go to fh.org/bridges, and for $12, you can purchase a Bible for someone who is waiting to receive it across the world. And don’t forget — your gift is tax deductible.
Patsy: I think it’s amazing that a seed or an acorn, that when you plant it, it already has the information in it to produce the fiber and bark and the limbs and the leaves and the fruit and the flowers. This little, tiny thing of what God can do.
Andrew Peterson: It’s crazy. Not only that, it has in it the ability to produce more acorns, so it’s the tree that it’s going to become and all of the trees that it will produce too.
Patsy: How can you look at that and not know that there’s a God who’s got a plan?
Andrew: That, and that I don’t think God’s intent is to destroy the cosmos. When you look at the DNA of nature, it seems to be one that wants to replenish itself and to sustain. So to me, that can get us a little away from the hell, fire, and brimstone thing, if you’re growing up in legalism, to realize, no, actually…
Andrew Peterson: God loves his creation.
Andrew: Yes, and he will continue to provide through his creation.
Andrew Peterson: Yeah, totally.
The way I think of it is that he didn’t… Scripture doesn’t say I’m going to make all new things; he says, “I’m going to make all things new.” So there’s a huge turn there that I grew up with this it’s all gonna burn anyway. Weird theology. It doesn’t make sense. He loves this place, and he wants us to love it too.
And so, man, having that full permission to look at what he’s made and just delight in it and kind of ask yourself if this is what the broken creation looks like and it’s incredibly beautiful, imagine a redeemed one. New creation theology is kind of crucial to the way that I think of writing.
When I was writing the book, I was just again and again imagining if my mom and dad could make their little homestead so beautiful in 30 years. My mom will be millions of years old. Imagine what an amazing garden she will make with that much time. It’s a beautiful thought.
Andrew: That is an extremely beautiful thought. I love how you incorporate generations into your life. You always have. Anyone who follows you or is interested in what you offer to the world can’t help but be interested in your family as well, who now are essentially adults. Your last one is… Well, I would say they’re all adults. They’re grownups. And so they’re offering to the world now from their own creation, from their own muses.
I want to talk about some new projects you have that are for all ages. Before we do that, did you envision… Your kids are so artistic — music, visual art, every bit of it. And now y’all are beginning to partner together and do things together, which is so cool.
Patsy: Lovely to see their names listed with yours and what their part is in it.
Andrew Peterson: It’s the best. It’s the best thing. It’s a dream.
Andrew: You didn’t shy away from them being artistic types or doing what you loved as well.
Andrew Peterson: I didn’t shy away from it, but I was also very conscious of… Like I didn’t want them growing up with some burden of expectation. So we didn’t actually make them take music lessons. We tried violin for a minute, and that’s miserable for any kid. I was just like, I’d rather them just discover on their own. That way there’s no sense of… I don’t want them to resent this. And to my great delight, I basically tricked them into going into the arts.
But I think what a blessing to grow up in a city like Nashville. When we were growing up, there probably weren’t any other professional artists that we knew, maybe one or two. But to grow up in a whole community of people who are poets and authors and painters and songwriters, who also go to church on Sunday. So up at church and see this as this really valid way to build the Kingdom and love God and love neighbor. It’s amazing, right?
Patsy: When I came here to visit, I just was so aware of the palpable creative level in the community.
Andrew Peterson: It’s wonderful. And it’s nurturing too. It’s not a cut throat. There may be corners of it that are, but I haven’t experienced it. It’s like people celebrate each other's successes. It’s a really good garden to grow in. And I think that’s because of the church. There are amazing churches here, and the churches here tend to be very supportive.
I’ll tell this story all the time, but sometimes pastors will be like, “How do we encourage the arts in our people?” A pastor at a church we used to go to commissioned my son Aedan, who’s the painter, to paint the trinity. Imagine that.
So he said, “Trinity Sunday’s in two months or whatever. Will you paint the trinity?” He was 16 I think. He dove into all this iconography and was researching it and reading theology books about the trinity, trying to get his head around how do I convey this crazy idea visually. And ended up working so hard, made this beautiful painting that he gave to the pastor, and we showed up on Trinity Sunday, and it was framed on an easel in front of the door. Everybody saw it and ooo’d and aww’d when they walked through. And then he passed it around during the sermon and referred to it.
And I was a mess because when I was a 16-year-old nerdy, comic book reading, fantasy novel reading, rock ‘n’ roll kid, I never thought that there was a seat for me at the table in the Kingdom or in the church. I just never could’ve imagined that there would be a way for me to use my gifting there. And so for him to see that in my son and affirm it and say, “Hey, guess what. Here’s a way that you can serve,” I think that’s a good picture of what a lot of Nashville can be like at its best.
So I think that’s it. Our kids just grew up in this Rabbit Room community, going to Hutchmoot every year, our conference, and seeing this giant yes to the question “is there a seat for me at the table?” So then they could just follow their noses.
My son got into painting, and they’re all three musicians. They have a band together called Wake Low, which is just mind-blowingly good. And my daughter’s in college, but she’s a singer-songwriter, tours around the country by herself now. And then my other son is this amazing record producer and drummer. But yeah, my daughter and son are coming on tour for the Christmas tour this year. Skye, who’s amazing, she was like, “I just need to know you’re not just doing this to be nice.”
Andrew: I love it. I love it.
Andrew Peterson: I was like, “Well, that’s a tricky question. I am doing it to be nice, but also, I would not be doing this if I did not believe that you were really, really good at what you do.” So it’s like both and. There is some nepotism where it’s like you’re just getting the job because of dad.
But man, she is such a great singer and such a gift to have around. So they’re legitimately good at what they do. We can take very little credit for that. They’re just really gifted, but they’ve been nurtured by this amazing community.
Andrew: One way that you and your community, and this is now including your children too, have invited or have helped people see there is a seat at the table for them and their creativity and their imagination is, of course, with The Wingfeather Saga, which anyone who is familiar with you is familiar with that.
One time I was at my cousin’s house in Pittsburgh — this was a few years ago — but they were reading out loud one of the Wingfeather Sagas I think to the 8-year-old. His name was Drew. He said, “Hey, would you come read to me tonight?” And I was like, “Sure, what are you reading?” I mean, I couldn’t pronounce anything. I didn’t have a lot of context. He was correcting me every other word. I thought, This is incredible.
Anyway, you have a new — I want to call it a guide — but you help explain it. Creaturepedia is basically like the ultimate partner to The Wingfeather Saga series.
Andrew Peterson: Yeah, it’s kind of an ancillary book.
The main character, Janner Igiby Wingfeather, in the books is kind of this bookish kid, and he loves Pembrick’s Creaturepedia because he needs to know about the animals and the beasts that live in the forest. And so in the books, one of the fun things about writing fantasy is that you get to just build the world however you want, so I get to make the trees do what I want. I can make the animals… I thought, Wouldn’t it be funny if cows had fangs and were carnivorous? I’ve always been terrified of cows, so this is like an embodiment of it.
Patsy: So you always thought they were a little dangerous.
Andrew Peterson: Yes, and so I was like, What if they were like the equivalent of a bear in the forest, this toothy cow?
So Pembrick’s Creaturepedia is like a book that Janner references a lot in the stories, and it was like, Oh yeah, let’s see what happens if we make an actual bestiary. And so Aedan was 15 or 16 when we put it out, the first limited run version of it, and now that he’s a college graduate and he’s married, he’s a professional illustrator, he was like, “Can I have another whack at drawing those creatures?” And so I got to partner with him and re-release the book, and it’s just wonderful. He did a great job.
Andrew: Let’s talk about fantasy for a second because I do think part of I don’t know if you want to call it evangelical culture or whatever, just the way we try to box our spirituality and box God in, which is human nature, so this is not criticism of that but awareness of that, can be very limiting to our imagination. Though I think our imagination may be one of the greatest resources we have to relate to God and to ponder on God and his ways are higher than mine, to actually think about that. What’s your take on is there a place for fantasy in a disciple’s life?
“Our imagination may be one of the greatest resources we have to relate to God.”
Andrew Peterson: Absolutely. How many people do you know who are believers in some way because of C. S. Lewis? So many people. Their faith and their imagination about who Jesus is, it’s been shaped by reading those books and understanding things better that way. Tolkien’s the same way.
I just think there’s something really amazing that happens when somebody who is a true believer sits down to just tell a great story, that the story ends up doing more than they can do. And so that was kind of my goal with this was like I’m not gonna try to shoehorn any agenda into this. My agenda is write a book series that I would’ve loved to have read when I was 12 and geek out over it in that way.
And then while doing it, trust that God’s gonna do what he wants with it. And I think that’s a good way to just live in general. Do the thing you love and know that, if you’re a Christian, you’ve got the Holy Spirit in you and you can trust him to do his work.
Patsy: I love where you said that the first thing you did was you sat down and you drew a map. So I went looking in the front covers and the back covers because I love maps, because it visually helps me to capture where I’m going to be and travel with you to the different places. So is mapping always part of your fantasy writing?
Andrew Peterson: Yeah, definitely. It’s crucial.
The cool thing about it was, sitting down to write a fantasy novel, I remember that Tolkien started with a map. I had all these false starts with the stories because I kept asking questions about the world. In the early chapters of the book, the main character went into town to buy something, and I didn't know what kind of money he needed because it was like, Oh, it’s not gonna be bills. What do they buy things with, and how does that work? So you realize that you’ve got to do all this research, so to speak.
So the cool thing was I backed way up and I made the map and after the fact realized that it’s exactly how God did it, right. Like I sat there with my sketchpad, and I divided the water from the land, and I said, “Let there be rivers here, and let there be a town here and a city here.” So you end up getting this little glimpse into the delight that God must’ve had when he made trees to bear fruit.
So yeah, I think that place is a character in the story. C. S. Lewis talked a lot about that, that the setting, the atmosphere of a story is so crucial to how it settles in our minds. And when you were talking about Texas earlier, I was like, Oh, I’ve been to that part of Texas. It is a character in the story. Something happens to us when we are grounded in place, which loops it back around to God of the Garden, that place matters. Your neighborhood matters. The trees that are growing and the creeks, it all kind of goes into the pot.
And the more we’re paying attention to the world God made, the more we have to draw on for when we’re sitting down to write our fantasy novel. You kind of realize that the intricacies and the wonderful wild and kind of scary way things are made ends up shaping the story in a real way.
Can I read something really quick? Literally today I was talking to somebody, and they read this quote to me, and I’m gonna find it really quick. He texted me the quote, and I was like, Oh yeah, that’s great. There’s this guy Clyde Kilby, who is like a C. S. Lewis scholar. He said in the thing, it was like a list of 10 resolutions for mental health, and one of them is: “I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what C. S. Lewis calls their divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic existence.”
Isn’t that marvelous?
Patsy: Wow, yes.
Andrew Peterson: I just love that rule. And I was thinking about it because during COVID, I got to be home everyday. My kids would make fun of me whenever they were home because they’d look out the window and see their dad just standing in the yard staring at a tree. And it’s true. This morning I got up before dawn, and I was walking the property and just looking at stuff.
Somebody was like, “Are you working on songs? What are you doing?” And I was kind of embarrassed. I was like, “Actually, I’m not thinking about anything. My mind is a blank slate. I’m just like, Cool tree. Neat tree.”
Andrew: Isn’t it relieving though?
Andrew Peterson: Yeah, it’s like a bath for your brain, and just being in the presence of this stuff washes so much stuff away.
I mention this in the book, but there’s a book called The Well-Gardened Mind kind of about the mental and physical benefits of gardening. It talks about how scientifically they’ve shown that being in the presence of the color green changes our heart rate. That’s amazing, and I kind of am like, Oh yeah, I know that feeling when I’m at Radnor Lake or whatever. You feel something change when you’re just around creation.
So anyway, that idea that you’re looking at it and enjoying it for exactly what it is, nothing else, let your mind be blank, and it’s filling up this tank in us that I can’t really explain.
But yeah, when it comes to the Creaturepedia and writing the Wingfeather books, whatever it may be, all of that stuff is a reminder, a constant reminder, to me that where you are matters, so dig in.
Andrew: I even remember when I moved into my house about three years ago that some friends of mine, friends of ours, came over and were helping me kind of place stuff because I know what stuff I like; I just don’t always know where to put it in rooms and stuff to make it inviting and invitational. And she said, “You need something alive in every room.” We went plant shopping and all this stuff, and I found that even tending to those few items, even when I’m traveling and stuff, I’m thinking about something to tend to.
As we kind of conclude here, I want to read this. It’s not exactly related to what we’re talking about, but being in your company, I want to read this while in your company and get your thoughts on this. It’s a Madeleine L’Engle quote. Now this was more about she was in a conversation with an interviewer about whether the Bible was literally true word for word, all this kind of thing, the inerrancy question. But I think this applies to our permission to be imaginative and how connected that can be to God.
The interviewer said, “If the Bible is not literally true, does that mean we don’t need to take it seriously?” That was his question to her. And she said, “Oh no, no, no. You do, because it’s truth, not fact, and you have to take truth seriously, even when it expands beyond the facts.”
Andrew Peterson: Man, wasn’t she great? Did you know her at all?
Patsy: I did not. I read her work of course, but I did not get to meet her. I had several goals set for myself, but unfortunately, it didn’t unfold that way.
Andrew Peterson: I haven’t read a ton of her books, but Walking On Water is just one of the very most formative books that I ever read.
Patsy: And always recommended to writers.
Andrew Peterson: Yeah, it’s a great book.
I always bristle at that whole “is the Bible literally true” thing because I’m like, Well, are poems literally true? That doesn’t make sense. It’s the wrong question.
Andrew: Agreed.
Andrew Peterson: Scripture can be completely inerrant and, at the same time, be full of wonder and imagination. The gift of poetry is that it… Oh wow, I don’t even know how to say it. But it invites you in. How do I put it? This is a thought that I have not uttered, so I don’t know if I can make it clear.
So when I’m listening to some of my favorite songwriters, I don’t know if you do this. Justin Vernon, this guy from this band called Bon Iver, I never understand a word that he’s saying. When I have gone through to read the lyrics, I’m super disappointed. I’m like, Ah, that song was so much better before I knew what he was saying. But the thing is he doesn’t really care. The words are about the sound of the word to him, and there’s so much going on in his music other than lyric and I’m a lyric guy.
Andrew: Yeah, he’s a soundscape.
Andrew Peterson: Exactly. And so what I find is that I bring my own story to his song, and the song becomes mine. I understand what he’s doing because he’s made room in the song for me to bring my own understanding.
So the wonderful thing about poetry to me is that the poet can mean one thing, but God may have something else entirely in mind for the person who receives it. And so that’s tricky. The waters are tricky when you’re talking about the poetry in Scripture, but you know, King David can be writing about his own sin and his own grief, but I’m bringing my grief to his song and the Lord is making something new out of the poetry and the imagination that he brought to language and how language works.
My goodness. I’m reading Isaiah right now, and it geeks me out every time. I don’t read it often enough, but man, talk about poetry. I’m astonished at how his metaphors don’t really repeat themselves that often, but there are constant metaphors in those books. The only way you could do that, obviously he was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but he was a student of creation. He was a student of words. He had to have brought so much to the table, and God kind of raised him up to write these things.
I do agree that Scripture is so many things. Michael Card talks about reading the Bible with an informed imagination, and I think that’s the trick.
Andrew: That’s beautiful.
Patsy: The heavens declare the glory of God. It will do it until the end of time, and then the song will go on forever. I love that he keeps declaring and making himself known to us, and he does it through trees, he does it through imagination, and you have brought to the table for others a very full serving of both. Thank you for what you do.
“The heavens declare the glory of God.”
Andrew Peterson: Thank you very much.
Andrew: Yeah, thanks for being here.
Patsy: Bridges is produced by my co-host, Andrew Greer.
Andrew: And co-produced by my co-host, Patsy Clairmont. Our podcast is recorded by Jesse Phillips.
Patsy: And sometimes my son, Jason Clairmont.
Andrew: At the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee. Jesse Phillips is also our editor and mixes our show. And our theme music is written by Kyle Buchanan and yours truly, and all of the instruments of the music were played by Kyle Buchanan at Aries Lounge in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Our transcripts are provided by Rachel Worsham. Thanks, Rachel, for all your work.
Patsy: If you like what you’ve been listening to, you can help us out by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to our show.
Andrew: For more information about Patsy, myself, or to read transcripts and to listen to more episodes, go to bridgesshow.com.
Patsy: Catch you next time.