Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

by Andrew Peterson

That calling, as I understand it, is to use whatever gifts I’ve been given to tell the truth as beautifully as I can.

As you’ll see, I’ve spent a lot of my life following my nose, usually turning up that nose whenever I’m expected to do something I don’t feel like doing. I realize this is a weakness. But it’s a weakness God has redeemed again and again, one that has gotten me into a lot of trouble, the getting out of which has always led to something healing or edifying.

That is to say, you know and understand things about the heart of God that only you can teach.

Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms” (John 14:2). Could it be that those rooms are inner chambers in the heart of God, each of which has an individual’s name on it? If this is true, and I’d like to believe it is, then all I have to do is tell about my Lord and my God. Because I know him intimately, uniquely, it may be a revelation, in a sense, of the secret things of the Father. This is part of my calling—to

make known the heart of God. And because he holds a special place in his heart for me and me alone (just as he holds a special place for you), my story stands a chance to be edifying to my sisters and brothers, just as your story, your insight, your revelation of God’s heart, is something the rest of us need.

The best thing you can do is to keep your nose to the grindstone, to remember that it takes a lot of work to hone your gift into something useful, and that you have to learn to enjoy the work—especially the parts you don’t enjoy.

We may want something harmless, but if it’s out of place, if it comes before the right thing, then what’s benign becomes malignant. We want the wrong thing.

Wrench your heart away from all the things you think you need for your supposed financial security, your social status. Set fire to your expectations, your rights, and even your dreams. When all that is gone, it will be clear that the only thing you ever really had was this wild and Holy Spirit that whirls about inside you, urging you to follow where his wind blows.

righteousness means more than pious obedience; it means letting a strong, humble mercy mark your path, even when—especially when—you don’t know where it’s taking you.

You’re a sinful, desperate cur who dances for joy. Your heart is so full it must be poured out. You see the world as a dark, messy place that needs rearranging, and with all that light shooting out of your pores you’re just the person to do it.

Jesus, you’re the source of beauty: help us make something beautiful; Jesus, you’re the Word that was with God in the beginning, the Word that made all creation: give us words and be with us in this beginning of this creation; Jesus, you’re the light of the world: light our way into this mystery; Jesus, you love perfectly and with perfect humility: let this imperfect music bear your perfect love to every ear that hears it.

Since we were made to glorify God, worship happens when someone is doing exactly what he or she was made to do.

When you pray, dedicate your home, your yard, your bonus room and dishwasher and bicycle and garden to the King. As surely as you dedicate your heart to him, dedicate your front porch. Daily pledge every atom of every tool at your disposal to his good pleasure.

I’ll probably always be self-conscious, so the battle to make something out of nothing at all will rage on, and I’ll have to fight it in the familiar territory of selfishness until the Spirit winnows my work into something loving and lovable. I’m no longer surprised by my capacity for self-doubt, but I’ve learned that the only way to

victory is to lose myself, to surrender to sacredness—which

is safer than insecurity. I have to accept the fact that ...

The performance was far from perfect, but I think they could see what we were trying to do, and that was enough. Intention trumps execution—remember that.

Standing on that stage while the crowd sings the doxology at the end is a thunderously good feeling, not only because it sounds so nice but because it reminds me that God sometimes gives us exactly what we asked for, and then some.

You can think and plan and think some more, but none of that is half as important as doing something, however imperfect or incomplete it is.

prospects. Sometimes you start with nothing and hope it all works out. Not sometimes—every time. All you really have is your willingness to fail, coupled with the mountain of evidence that the Maker has never left nor forsaken you.

We’re not invited into this because God needs us, but because he wants us.

We’re invited to join with all nature in manifold witness to his great faithfulness—and since creation is going to declare it either way, we might as well jump in with our half-finished songs and join the chorus.

If you wait until the conditions are perfect, you’ll never write a thing.

Writing is always a matter of life or death, he says, and finding the right arrangements of words is like being a bird trapped in a house, trying to find its way through the open window.

If you’re called to speak light into the darkness, then believe this: the darkness wants to shut you up. Even now I can feel the strength of Resistance. Every sentence feels like a wobbly step. Everything I think feels obvious, pointless, silly.

Lead me home, Jesus. Let me die to my need to be someone important. Let me die to my need to leave a mark.

Let your words and music be more beautiful by their death in the soil of worship, that the husk of your own imperfection might fall away and germinate into some bright, eternal song only God could have written.

Not once did I suspect in all my sketching and reading and aching to enter the stories I read that Jesus was calling to me through them.

Scripture tells us that when God looks at a Christian he sees Christ’s righteousness—in a similar way, the Christian is now free to see Christ in everything. Even himself. I was gloriously alive, and I was at home in the palm of God’s hand.

So if songwriting is about patience, writing a book is about endurance. You don’t really need that flash of inspiration to write a book. In fact, the whole process is about as mundane as you can imagine, churning out pages made out of paragraphs made out of sentences made out of words. If inspiration comes, you don’t really know it until the book is finished. Not only that, the satisfaction of sharing it with someone is deferred for months, if not years.

I used to think, arrogantly, that once I was a Real Author or a Professional Musician, people would be impressed. I’m here to tell you they really, really aren’t—not for long, at least. Hearing your own song on the radio is one of the coolest experiences in the world, and so is seeing your book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. But after the thrill fades, you’re still just plain old you.

So being a writer is more like being an architect or a soldier or a nurse than most people realize. It’s a craft that you’re constantly learning, a craft that is shaped by a bit of talent in submission to a great deal of work.

Serving the work doesn’t mean we don’t have an agenda, but that the agenda works in partnership with the wild, creative spirit—not as an overlord.

Agenda is bad when it usurps the beauty. Christian art should strive for a marriage of the two, just as Christ is described as being “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Truth without beauty can be a weapon; beauty without truth can be spineless. The two together are like lyric and melody.

It goes without saying (I hope) that since God is always inviting us frail humans into the creative process, that doesn’t mean we check our taste at the door and write garbage. We’re not zombies, nor should we be presumptuous about what the song wants to be. Humility means working that much harder to make it beautiful.

The way to push yourself into new territory isn’t about pushing yourself as much as it is allowing yourself to be pulled along. A few years ago I was talking with Sally Lloyd-Jones, and she described the way she felt going into her new project: “I feel like I’m following clues.”

So when I sit down to write a song I often ask myself, as I have for years, what my songwriting heroes would do. That list includes Andy Gullahorn, reminding me to have the guts to write it like I would say it. It’s a principle that’s simple and yet packed with meaning, just like his songs. It’s not just advice for songwriting, though; it’s a good way to live. Dash all pretense; be who you are; kick down the walls; love the listener. It’s scary, sure. But good songwriting is a call to courage, on both sides of the exchange.

Sometimes you have to do the work even if you don’t feel like it. Sometimes you have to put away your wants and do what needs to be done, which really means dying to self in order to find life. This is a way of practicing resurrection.

If you’re called to do this sort of work, then keep those dear ones in your mind as you fight your way up the long mountain of obedience. You’ll be tempted to slow down, or take an easier route—but it is only by discipline that you’ll finish, and it is only in finishing that you’ll be able to offer up your humble work to those weary souls who may need it.

You can’t blame your equipment. You can’t blame your lack of time. You can’t blame your upbringing. Either you’re willing to steward the gift God gave you by stepping into the ring and fighting for it, or you spend your life in training, cashing in excuse after excuse until there’s no time left, no fight left, no song, no story.

There’s a tension, to be sure, between holding yourself to a progressively higher bar while staying brave enough to put pen to paper. But if you maintain the posture of a student eager to learn the craft, you’ll gradually improve without realizing it. After you’ve made something, go back in a few weeks and critique it with a gentle heart.

That’s community. They look you in the eye and remind you who you are in Christ. They reiterate your calling when you forget what it is. They step into the garden and help you weed it, help you to grow something beautiful.

I know many Christian songwriters who have written deft and devastatingly beautiful lyrics about divorce, depression, loneliness, doubt, and anger. The problem isn’t that there aren’t artists emulating the psalmists’ honesty. The problem is that no one seems to pay any attention to them.

So instead of trying to change an industry that will never change, I decided to keep my head down and focus on what I’m called to. It meant not writing songs just for radio, but also celebrating when they decided to add my songs now and then to their playlists. They’re not the enemy, after all, and radio does a lot of good for a lot of people.

that community—especially Christ-centered community—nourishes art, and art nourishes community.

At church, even when I receive the Eucharist and sing songs of the Good King with my friends and family, I feel that same persistent longing, dogging my every step. My heart, God help me, is restless, and has ever been so. What, Jesus, can I do? Write about it, a voice says in my head. Tell that story. But I get so tired. I know my heart is plagued with sin after sin after sin—sins that would appall you, dear reader—and the voice still says Write about that. Don’t hold it in. Watch how even that can bring me glory. Ah, Lord, I’m so weak! And so foolish. I’ve hurt my wife, my children, my friends. I just want to go home. Write that song. Write that story. Homesickness is the way home.

Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor, too, by making worlds and works of beauty that blanket the earth like flowers. Let your homesickness keep you always from spiritual slumber. Remember that it is in the fellowship of saints, of friends and family, that your gift will grow best, and will find its best expression. And until the Kingdom comes in its fullness, bend your will to the joyful, tearful telling of its coming.

Even if you’re serving your audience well, there will be those who don’t get it. Be content with that. As long as you’re holding fast to that which has taken hold of you, as long as you’re obedient to your gifting and your vocation, then accolades and record sales and being understood aren’t any of your business.

Delight in the fact that God made the world with a Word, and that the early Christians were called the People of the Book, and stories are the language our hearts were made to speak and to understand. Read! Read your Bible.

By the way, people have asked Jamie and me how we fostered their talent, and to be honest, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because in our house, art was a matter of course, along with prayer and Scripture and church. We didn’t force it on them. In fact, we hardly gave them any formal training (not that lessons are a bad thing). We simply treated creativity and imagination as a natural part of Christ’s intention for his people, and then fanned the flame whenever our kids showed a creative spark. Oh, how I’ve delighted in seeing them outpace what little I could teach. As soon as I removed the training wheels, they left me in the dust, tearing through the streets of their own creativity. It’s been a pleasure to watch them go.