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Come live in my driveway! by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/OTW_S6_E5_Come-live-in-my-driveway.mp3 FollowFollowFollowFollow Sign up for the Newsletter Thanks for signing up! First Name Last Name Email Subscribe Become a Patron PartnerI depend on the support of Patrons like you to make podcasts, music, books, and more. A one-time or monthly gift makes a huge difference! Click Here A year ago in February some friends and I started a new tradition. I drove six or seven hours to their house and parked my camper van in their driveway. These folks were some of the very first friends I made when I moved to the Jackson, MS area over ten years ago. I met them at church, and then discovered that they lived just down the street from me. I could just about walk to their house, and although I never did walk there, I dropped in a lot. They assured me that they really were the kind of people who actually meant it when they said, “Just drop by anytime.” So, I tried them out, and, it turns out they weren’t lying.  For the few years they lived down the street, we had a little small group that met at their place. It wasn’t attached to any particular church. Instead, it was just made up of people this couple had met out and about—at the coffeeshop or at work. I did go to church with them, but I don’t think anyone else in the group did, and some didn’t go to church at all. At any rate, that small group became a lifeline in the early days of living here, and this particular family became like family to me.  Time sped on, and eventually they moved to another state. We missed each other a lot, but we kept up and I made short visits whenever I was passing through on house concert tours. Then, about two or three years ago, a January rolled around that was particularly lonely around here, and I felt like I needed to get out of town and go see some friends. So, I called up these friends, the Humphreys, and they said, “Come live in our driveway.” I thought, “Well, I’ve always wanted to live in your driveway! I’ve even got a tiny house on wheels that would do the job quite nicely.”   Not long after that, I rolled out of Mississippi and headed West to Texas. Before long, I was nicely situated just a few feet away from the friends I had so missed. Originally, the idea was to stay a few weeks, but by the end I wound up staying over a month. It was hard to leave when the time came. I had gotten so used to being included in the rhythms of their family and household. They made me feel right at home. Maybe more at home that I was able to feel in my actual home during that season.   It was such a wonderful experience, that we decided to make it a bit of a tradition. I’m heading out tomorrow to spend the month of February living in their driveway again.   But this story reminds me of a few things. For starters, it is good for me to remember that it’s always possible to begin brand new traditions. I mean, if there’s some good idea about something I wish was a part of my life, I can try to think of ways to start building it into the way I live. And friends can do those kinds of things together, as well. Friends can come up with new creative constructs that benefit and continue to cultivate their connections with each other. I’ll admit, in my case, the Humphreys are unusually hospitable, flexible, and even adventurous in that way. And the friendship accumulated for years before it was ripe for an experiment like ours.   I’ve tried other traditions that didn’t quite work. That’s good to be realistic about. Sometimes the timing is off, the relationship isn’t quite there, or who knows? For whatever reason, the spark doesn’t catch the kindling. But here’s the basic idea: life is, and friendships are, opportunities for creativity, imagination, and adventure. Like any art-form in any medium, making something new takes risk and vulnerability, and sometimes doesn’t work out. But be on the lookout for friends who might be willing to collaborate on new ways on connecting, or making new traditions.   I have another friend who had a significant birthday approaching, and she asked herself, “If I could do anything to celebrate this birthday, what would it be?” She decided to ask a few friends to spend a long weekend at an airbnb near her favorite national park. Did it feel like a crazy idea? Was it a risk? Yes. What if everybody said no or couldn’t make the trip? She bravely took that risk, and created a new tradition—even connecting friends of hers that didn’t know each other. In that way, she facilitated the creation of brand new friendships. We can do things like that.    The second thing I think of, is the simple fact that we really need friends. I know I do. I need substantial real-life presence with people who know and love me. With the Humphreys, for example, one of the biggest blessings is simply being around as they’re living their normal day-to-day life, so much more so than any big interesting thing we manage to do while I’m there. Maybe we’re just chatting on the porch, watching big, noisy trucks drive past, or working on a puzzle box in the kitchen while the kids eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. One day last February we spent a whole day taking apart a clothes washer to replace a water pump. It was so fun just being together working on something.   It’s been deeply important to me to find those folks out there who take friendship seriously. The Humphreys aren’t the only ones in my life. There are many delightful people who have loved me so, so well, and in whose homes I’ve been made to feel like a part of the family.  One of my favorite verses is from Psalm 68:6. It says that God sets the lonely in families. For me, that has not primarily meant blood relatives, though I am very thankful for my biological family, especially my brother Sam with whom I live. My life hasn’t always taken the shape that I expected or hoped it would. At times that has ranged from frightening to disappointing, from sad to frustrating. But, what I have seen over time, is the truth of that little verse. God has never stopped working to lead me to people and help me discover ways to find friends who’ve made a place for me in the world. The Lord has been persistently kind in his efforts to supply me with kindred, even across all my wanderings. He knows better than I do that it is not good for a human to be alone.  A Liturgy for Friendship Lord, you said that it is not good for a human to be alone.  You have made yourself clear; it was never your intention that we should endure loneliness. Rather, your dream for your children was that they should be held— always and ever embraced—always and ever embedded in the fabric of belonging love.   But, Lord, we are lonely!  The brokenness of the world, the schemes of our diabolical Enemy, and our own bent and bruised natures, drive wedges where there ought to be wonder, dig graves where there ought to be gracious welcome, breed fear where there ought to be faithful love, sow weariness where you long for us to find rest.   Hear our cry: “Lord, when will you set the lonely in families!”  Lord of kindness, make for us ways towards finding kindred. Warm-hearted Savior, gather us to those you know can warm our own hearts, before they grow too cold. Oh Holy Trinity—you who are our true home—make for us a place and home in your presence with those who have found their abiding place in you.   Oh Holy Trinity, you are, in yourself, the pattern of family and loving belonging we were created to image-forth in this world, would you weave the stranded threads of our lives into the living fabric of reality that is your very life.  Strengthen our hands to serve, our ears to listen, our mouths to speak wisdom and courage, and grace us with creativity and hope as we venture out towards those lives you have made to cross our path. May we seek first to offer belonging, and in so doing, learn to receive it.   Bless your people with the gift of friendship, Oh Lord. May we offer a taste of your kingdom to a lonely world, where Christ has already come, calling all who would listen, to be set within his everlasting family.   In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen. The post S6:E5 – Come live in my driveway! appeared first on Matthew Clark.

We're going to need a new song, Moses by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/OTW_S6_E4_a-new-song-Moses.mp3 FollowFollowFollowFollow Sign up for the Newsletter Thanks for signing up! First Name Last Name Email Subscribe Become a Patron PartnerI depend on the support of Patrons like you to make podcasts, music, books, and more. A one-time or monthly gift makes a huge difference! Click Here The branches are covered with ice down here in Mississippi, which is unusual, so most people I know are hunkered down indoors. We made a big pot of chicken soup a few days ago that’s been keeping us warm as the temperatures have dropped.   Speaking of dropping temperatures, a verse that has come to mind over and over again the last handful of years has been a line spoken by Jesus after his disciples got him talking about the destruction of the Temple, and the hard times to come as the world’s end approaches. Jesus says that because of the increase of wickedness in those days, the love of most will grow cold. You can find that whole conversation in Matthew, chapter 24.   I have felt it in myself. I have felt the creeping coldness. When I see how wickedness seems to flourish in the world, climbing and climbing to the top of the heap again and again, when I see how selfishness and scarcity have chilled the air in the habitat of my soul, I know Jesus was right. He was, as usual, deeply realistic about things, not to mention insightful of the human heart, meaning he always sees into it clearly.  And, yet, his own heart did not freeze up, somehow. Jesus remained, incredibly, both clear-eyed about the wickedness of the world and the tendencies of the human heart, and he remained warm-hearted about the future. He wasn’t blindly optimistic, it’s worth noting. I mean, he didn’t pretend like everything was going to be fine. In fact, Jesus’ realism can be pretty uncomfortable. He sees the cross coming, he sees the eventual destruction of the temple and all the misery to come. But, he also sees something else up ahead. Something so bright, beautiful, and substantial that it thaws the ice. Or, if it doesn’t thaw it, allows him to somehow skate on top of it to his destination. He, as Hebrews 12 says, sees joy up ahead. And the writer of Hebrews says that if we can get a glimpse of that joy Jesus came to make available to us, it will fortify our hearts against the creeping chill of evil in this world.   It won’t remove it, of course. That joy didn’t remove the experience of evil even for Jesus himself. He was still murdered all the same. Joy doesn’t spare us heartache. Doesn’t spare us suffering—even unjust suffering. But it does give us something to contrast against evil, and joy gives us a promise of God’s loving accompaniment in the midst of suffering, since joy is a fundamentally relational reality. Joy means someone good is glad to be with us. That good presence clarifies the difference between the works of God and the works of the Enemy.     The story the Bible tells is, in large part, that of a God who suffers unjustly at the hands of cold-hearted humanity. A God, who through a long, complicated process of relationship over time, continues to move with warmth towards those very people who treat him with such coldness. It’s the story of a God, who against all odds and a world of opposition, holds onto the hope of saving the world from drowning in the waters of chaos because the surface of the lake had become an impenetrable layer of ice. He is always working to melt that barrier and call us up and out of those waters, making our passage through chaos a baptism into new life, rather than a permanent prison.   And so, Jesus laments the wickedness of the world that is always threatening to freeze our hearts, steal, kill, and destroy our joy, and drown us in despair.     This week, I’ve been watching the news. It is chilling. I am praying for my friends in Minnesota. And this morning, I was reading the end of Deuteronomy, where I found something that surprised me. Let me back up for a little context… in the history of God’s relationship with his beloved (and broken) world so far, he’s reached out to a man named Abraham, whose family is going to become a sort of custom-made people-group. In order to save the whole wide world, God is going to make his focus really tight, and work with one family. This family, over the next few generations, is going to get bigger and bigger while they’re enslaved in Egypt, then God will rescue them in Exodus, and at Sinai, he’ll begin shaping them into a nation with a totally different cultural form from everyone around them. They’re going to be weirdos, honestly, because the God who actually made the world, has become strange to the world. So Israel will be a custom-made nation whose culture God will shape in such a way that it will provide all the contextual structures for later on, when Jesus comes, so the things he says and does will actually be intelligible to the people he’s trying to talk to. It’s a long play on God’s part.   When we get to Deuteronomy, this is the second time God has brought his people to the very edge of the land he’s been preparing for them. This is where, once they’ve settled here, God can continue the work of shaping them culturally as a curated context to support the salvation he’s planning to pull off when Jesus comes. That context is necessary, for instance, without it, John the baptist calling Jesus “the lamb of God” is meaningless gibberish. With it, all kinds of meaning clicks into place.     But I mentioned something that surprised me about the end of Deuteronomy, right? Yes, at the end of the book, Moses is preparing to die, even as he is preparing the people to enter the promised land. And God is realistic about how this is going to go. Like Jesus in Matthew 24, he is clear-eyed about human hearts, and he’s very honest with Moses about it. He knows these people’s hearts are going to grow cold and wicked, even in the promised land. In fact, the promised land may just be the place where they get cozy enough to take the old warmth for granted, allowing the fire to die.   But the thing that surprised me was God’s tactic for addressing the coldness. After chapter upon chapter of listing all the laws he knows the people will eventually forget, God says something like, “Moses, things are going to go badly just so you know, but I’ve got this great idea: let’s write a song for them to sing.” What? A song? Yep. God commands Moses to teach the people a song for when they’re love grows cold and they begin to slip away from the warmth of God’s ways. Embed this bit of sung poetry into the culture, so the people have something like an “axe for the frozen sea” to quote the title of a Ben Palpant book.   As a songwriter that caught my attention. This song is God’s protest song against the coldness of his people’s hearts toward him and toward one another. It’s a song that lays a picture of joy in contrast to evil, it’s a song that wafts like smelling salts under the nose of a numbed out brain, it’s a song that’s brutally honest about the terrifying consequences of giving in to the chill of wickedness, as well as, beautifully hopeful about the God who never stops inviting his frigid lovers to sit by his hearth and learn the ways that lead to life. And it is a song that promises God will meet anyone that is ice-bound along the way, to break them free of death’s overwhelming grasp.   God sings a protest song against our enemies, and even against us, when we have taken up the battle banner of rebellion against God’s ways. He invites us to listen, because if we do, this song will, “descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.” Can you hear the warm rain fall, like ice melting, caught up in the cupped hands of the crucified God? The God of perfect justice and abounding mercy? The post S6:E4 – We’re going to need a new song, Moses appeared first on Matthew Clark.

Horse-sense and the Meaning of the World by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/OTW_S6_E3_Horse-sense-and-the-meaning-of-the-world.mp3 FollowFollowFollowFollow Sign up for the Newsletter Thanks for signing up! First Name Last Name Email Subscribe Become a Patron PartnerI depend on the support of Patrons like you to make podcasts, music, books, and more. A one-time or monthly gift makes a huge difference! Click Here There’s an anecdote attributed to Beethoven, at least as I heard it somewhere, that I love. The story goes that after playing a certain piece of music, someone asked him, “Maestro, what does this piece of music mean?” “Ah!” he said, “good question,” and immediately he sat down at the piano and played the whole piece again from start to finish. You get the idea. The meaning of a piece of art can’t be separated from the art itself, as if, in the case of a story, for instance,  a so-called moral could be extracted from it, such that the story could be discarded. The meaning of the music, or the story, or the poem is not separate from its medium, but bound up with it. Can you imagine a smile meaning something without a face? No, the meaning of the smile can’t be separated from the medium through which the smile is made available, the peculiarities of a loved one’s bodied expression. Often it is the medium or mode of the communication that shapes us as much or more than the message itself. It was philosopher Marshall McLuhan who said, “The medium is the message.” What does that mean? Neil Postman, in his book “Amusing ourselves to death,” applies McLuhan’s phrase to television, specifically Sesame Street. Now, I grew up loving Sesame Street, but Postman argues that, for all its merits, even a wonderful show like Sesame Street, can’t help but teach us to love its medium, which is television. He explains that if we love a TV show, at least one thing that’s happening is we’re being trained to love television, which is the show’s medium.  Nowadays, even if this (hopefully beneficial) podcast is what you go to your smartphone for, you’re still being trained to love the medium, which, in part at least, is the device itself. It’s just a pattern of reality, not itself bad. For instance, like we mentioned above, if the message is love through a hug, smile, or loving words from a friend, the medium is that person, and you’re being trained to trust and attach to the medium. The medium and the message are inextricable. That’s why what is said and how it is said go together. Like music and its meaning, like language and the people who speak it, like a smile and a face.   I love to read outloud. One reason is because words don’t come from thin air, they come from people. People with bodies, body language, voices, gestures, and expressions. They have a way about them. The best writers make their characters real as you read—you can see how they move, you can just hear how they would say such and such.  I’ll give you an example from a song I wrote called “Looking for you.” Here’s the first line of the song, it goes, “what if you found out someone had been looking for you the whole time?” It depends as much on how it is said, as much or more than what is said. You can imagine other ways of saying that line, can’t you? Let me try it out with two different ways of saying it:  What if you found out someone had been looking for you the whole time. (with a threatening tone)  or What if you found out someone had been looking for you the whole time. (with a comforting tone)  That lyric could get creepy real fast, right? The non-verbal music or tone of the phrase matters to its meaning. I’ve heard it suggested that something like 85% of communication is non-verbal, implicit, and intuitive. That non-verbal 85% is one of art’s sweet spots, and it’s reflected in God’s artwork, the Creation.   So, let’s look at an example from nature… Like Beethoven’s music, you can dissect a frog and catalog all the parts, but what you’ll miss entirely is what a frog actually means. You might analyze what it is, but not why it is. George MacDonald, who wrote a whole essay about how the images in nature are meant to supply our imaginations with ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and God, puts it this way:  In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things; we see in them, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them. To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it—just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology. So Nature exists primarily for her look, her appeals to the heart and the imagination, her simple service to human need, and not for the secrets to be discovered in her and turned to man’s further use. Isn’t that interesting? Nature doesn’t primarily exist to be analytically autopsied, as if the message could be extracted from the medium, without destroying both. Gandalf’s comment about Saruman fits well here, “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.”  John Ciardi says the same of poetry, citing Charles Dickens  …the language of experience is not the language of  classification. A boy burning with ambition to become a jockey does not study a text on zoology.  He watches horses, he listens to what is said by those who have spent their lives around horses, he rides them, trains them, feeds them, curries them, pets them.  He lives with intense feelings toward them. He may never learn how many incisors a horse has, nor how many yards of intestines.  What does it matter?  He is concerned with a feel, a response-to, a sense of the character and reaction of  the living animal. And zoology cannot give him that. Not all the anatomizing of all the world’s horses could teach a man horse-sense… So for poetry.   So meaning is not about mere information. It’s not about extracting the message. That means art has something to say about the inseparability of orthodoxy (correct belief)  and orthopraxy (correct living), for instance, since art-making emphasizes that meaning (or truth) only arrives when what is said and how it is said—the verbal and the non-verbal communication—harmonize. Christ says to obey (orthopraxy) is to love, which may suggest that the non-verbal how of our lives—the part that art tends to specialize in—is actually primary. Which is another way of saying I’ll know what you believe by how you live, not by what you say you believe. I’ll know what a frog is by watching how it frogs, not by reading the autopsy report. Or, in the case of Ciardi’s jockey, I’ll gain some horse-sense by being around horses, not by listening to a lecture about their characteristics.  Am I saying that truth-claims are secondary and not important? No. I’m saying the natural order of things is that truth claims are literally second, in the sense that, in real life, they don’t happen first. First the stranger smiles at you, then you meet them and learn their name. The relational experience of the person precedes the propositional conclusions we arrive at. I smell the flower before I set down my doctrine stating how pleasant it smells.   Recently I heard someone describe the moment they began to take Christianity seriously. They said they were tasked at their job to interview an old man, a believer in his late 90s. As the old man began to tell stories of God’s work in his life from over fifty years before, tears ran down his wrinkled cheeks and praise tumbled from his quivering lips. The young man realized he was in the presence of someone not just conveying information, but bearing witness to a relational reality. This old man really had met and come to love a living Jesus.   It’s interesting that Jesus invites his disciples to follow him long before he asks them “who do you say that I am?” In some sense, the experience of discipleship precedes conversion. You get to know someone before you make truth-claims about them. And the truth-claims of the church are the result of the cumulative witness of many who’ve heard the deep, throbbing music of God’s lovingkindness, steeped themselves in the poetry of the holy heartbreak of covenant history, experienced the forgiveness, kindness, and beauty of God’s healing work, and they’ve come to know its meaning. They’ve come to put a name and a face to it all. “The meaning of the world?” they say, “It is Jesus.”  Having said that, can you detect the idea we began with—that the medium is the message? The main mediums God uses to communicate himself are the beauty and intelligibility of Creation, humans who embody his ways, and art that narrates his relationship with the world, by which I mean, firstly, the Bible, and secondly, the things that people make, whether books, music, poetry, etc.

Sitting very still, very cold, for a very long time by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/OTW_S6_E2_Sitting-very-still.mp3 FollowFollowFollowFollow Sign up for the Newsletter Thanks for signing up! First Name Last Name Email Subscribe Become a Patron PartnerI depend on the support of Patrons like you to make podcasts, music, books, and more. A one-time or monthly gift makes a huge difference! Click Here The last few weeks I’ve spent the better part of my days out at the family farm near where my parents live. It’s deer season until the end of January, and I grew up hunting with my Dad, so that’s what’s on my mind lately. Honestly, I didn’t exactly relish deer hunting as a kid. I wanted to be with my Dad, but as a wriggling eight-year-old boy, I didn’t get particularly excited about being set in the woods and expected to sit there alone and perfectly still for, on average, three hours. Also, my Dad was pretty gung-ho about hunting back then, and so we were usually up and in the woods well before sunrise. And it was usually very cold. I could never get warm enough. Now, as you can imagine, that made sitting still that much harder. Shivering and wiggling were means of survival in the midst of a long, chilly morning, I reasoned. Being just a young’un, I didn’t yet partake of a morning cup of coffee, so I’d also get really sleepy on the deer stand a lot of mornings.   One of the only times growing up that I actually saw a buck of any size, was when it woke me up from a nap. I had climbed down from the twelve foot high ladder stand to sleep a while on the ground. Better to interrupt a hunt with a nap, than snooze your way off the side of a high platform and wake up dead. At any rate, I woke up on the ground eventually, with a big eight-point buck just a few feet away inspecting the strange creature he’d discovered laid out at the base of a tree. I gasped upon waking and startled the big fella, and we both froze for a moment. I don’t know what he was thinking. I was thinking, “can I get to my gun?” But it was a few feet away leaned against a tree. No chance. As soon as I moved, the buck darted away. I don’t remember if I told anybody about that until much later. I’d fallen asleep on the job, and, almost to rub it in, a prize buck had stopped by to make sure I knew it.     You may think, if you’ve played any deer-themed video games or watched a hunting show, that deer hunting is action-packed. You may be under the impression that the woods are positively crammed with the critters. The truth of deer-hunting is that it is wonderfully boring. It mostly consists of sitting incredibly still, totally silent, for a very long time, while nothing much happens. You begin to memorize the trees. Your eyes catalogue every twig that looked like a deer for a few seconds, but wasn’t. Your mind marks every twitch of a leaf that wasn’t, in fact, a deer’s ear or tail, and learns, over time, to disregard the sound of all two-hundred deer footsteps that wound up just being squirrels dashing through leaves or birds hopping across the forest floor. It takes a long time to learn that you almost never hear a deer coming. In fact, you almost never see the coming either. Deer don’t walk up, they materialize. They are silent forest shadows creeping warily across tree trunks, just darkening the world around them enough to graze the eye.   I hunted for six-and-a-half hours in one day. I saw one bobcat. I memorized a lot of trees. But every hunter knows that most deer encounters last a few seconds. It’s like waiting hours in line for the rollercoaster, and, when those few seconds finally arrive, I’m not exaggerating when I say that the feeling is the same. I cannot explain why the human heart beats like it does when shadow-buck materializes out of nowhere in the woods, like this creature slipped through some fairy-portal that happened at that moment to criss-cross our dimension. I can’t explain how impossible it is to slow your breathing, keep your hands from shaking (even twenty minutes after the deer has vanished again). I also can’t quite explain why you want to kill something so clearly majestic and gentle. But, for whatever reason, you do. You feel like, if I could just stop that thing in its tracks, I could get at that beautiful magic—hold onto it somehow.   They call it buck-fever. It’s enough of a rush to keep you coming back to sit painfully still for ridiculously long amounts of time, in extreme discomfort. You go hunting for that. You go hunting for the pulse-pound so loud only the crash of a gun can out-boom it.   But, truth is, you also go for the stillness and the quiet, which is 99.9% of what hunting is. For instance, I’ve hunted entire seasons and not killed anything. In fact, seen almost nothing. And, I have grown to love the very things that, as a child, frustrated me. Sometimes I actually enjoy getting up that early and climbing a tree stand before the sun is even up. It can be kind of game to slip through the woods as quietly as you can. And I have developed a taste for sitting as still as I can and memorizing trees for three hours at a time. I never would have thought that could be the case.    It’s only been in the last year or two that I decided to buy a few trail cameras to leave out at the farm. They’ve got fancy ones that’ll send instant videos to your cell phone anytime a deer passes by, but I bought a couple of the cheapest, simplest ones I could find. Now, it’s part of my schedule to go switch out the SD cards on the trail cams, come home, and check for deer videos. It’s like Christmas morning, y’all. You never know what may have walked past in the last week or two! A pair of racoons waddling by? A coyote startled by the infrared lights? A big buck? A brand new fawn barely getting his legs under him? There is a whole world going on that would otherwise go unseen, but there’s a tiny portion of the forest where the goings-on of that secret world are whispered.  Your whole life your own two eyes may only be able to see a tiny portion of the good that’s going on in this world. Buechner famously said that, “what’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”     From the deer stand I can hear the jets overhead and some big motor rumble down the gravel road not far off. There are horrible things going on in the world. Things that keep me from sleeping some nights. But they won’t amount to anything in the end. I am hunting for the things that will. I am out in the long stillness picking out the slender trail of the quiet, enduring things. Up before daylight, keeping watch in the cold for the dawn that may bring a longed-for glimpse of the Forest King with his spreading crown, as he steps from another world into this one.  The post S6:E2 – Sitting very still, very cold, for a very long time appeared first on Matthew Clark.

Reclamation: Fixing up a Four Wheeler by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/OTW_S6_E1_fixing-a-four-wheeler.mp3 FollowFollowFollowFollow Sign up for the Newsletter Thanks for signing up! First Name Last Name Email Subscribe Become a Patron PartnerI depend on the support of Patrons like you to make podcasts, music, books, and more. A one-time or monthly gift makes a huge difference! Click Here I’ve been trying to get the grease out from under my fingernails for a few days. There have been hours spent researching to find just the right parts, scouring youtube for videos on how to fix this or that axle carrier, install a new carburetor, or what size spark plug socket to use on this 1986 Honda four-wheeler. It surprises me sometimes, but I can get delightfully lost in these details. My brother called it detective work. Restoring an old machine takes some sleuthing to see if you can puzzle out all the components to bring a rusty old farm implement back to life after years and years of neglect.  I was telling my sister, Angela, a few days ago that I have a very specific memory of clinging to her as she drove this four wheeler around a pasture when my Dad and Uncle first purchased it. I wanted to drive it so badly, but I wasn’t allowed. I was only six. However, my older sister was eleven and I could ride behind her as long as my Dad could see us. This past week, as I’ve been working on the old rust-bucket, I can see that field where Angela and I rode the gleaming new vehicle back then, except, it’s not a field at all. No, not anymore. It’s a stand of pine trees, nearly fully grown now. I can see the tall, golden grasses waving in my memory, where now pines stand straight and tall. Back then, I dreamed of the day when I’d finally be old enough to ride this thing all by myself.    About this time last year, I saw the old four wheeler languishing in the pole barn out at the farm. I’m not sure when it had last been cranked. The airless tires drooped like melted wax, mud and rust mingled to cover the frame, and the seat cracked and peeled like gray paint curling on an abandoned shack. The red plastic body had faded to dullness over the years. I felt sorry for it. But more than that, I felt like it was some piece of my childhood, some old joy and combustion that no one had tended to for such a long time that it was slowly decaying into nothing. If something weren’t done about it, it would be irretrievable before much longer. The question arose in my mind, was it already too late?   That set me to researching. I discovered that this particular model of fourwheeler (A 1986 Honda Fourtrax 250) had, in its day, been a fine machine. I was surprised to find more than a few folks on youtube excited to get their hands on one in order to fix it up. Could it be that this old thing was somewhat prized? I hadn’t expected that. So far so good. I had a good machine — good material to work with, it seemed. I guess that, because of that, I was able to find a good bit of information on it, and, what’s better, it wouldn’t be too difficult to find parts for the repairs.  But then, I got busy with other projects. The last book of the Well Trilogy was wrapping up, and the launch process needed attention. I put a bookmark in the story of reclaiming the old fourwheeler, and set it aside, where a stack of other books inevitably piled on top of it. On went the year, I was away from home for most of the second half, gone all of July overseas, home for three weeks in August, before spending the rest of the Fall on the road touring with the songs and stories of The Well Trilogy. When this December rolled around, I was out at the farm again, and there it was: the lifeless old thing—tired and forgotten.  It would feel so good to hear that thing crank up again after all these years. How fun would it be to ride the old paths through these woods again? The ones that I haven’t even ventured upon since this thing broke down? To crash through some mud-puddle like a rain-tromping toddler, to weave through the acres, get to know this place better. It was just a week ago as I was pulling the old, gummed-up carburetor from the heart of the machine to transplant a new one, that the word reclamation popped into my mind. Entropy is always groping at our hearts. The long lazy slump of decay, disregard, and carelessness seems to never tire of letting the air seep slowly from the tires. Here’s this old thing that used to boom with ignition, spin out on the turf with a kind of eager combustion, like a horse eager to run the race.     Is it too late to pay attention to that old liveliness? To see where the rust has crept into the bones, and to fight back with a little axle grease, and TLC? For me, working on this fourwheeler feels like a way of practicing another kind of regard, another kind of healing maintenance. It’s a work of hands-on reclamation. A choice to be a present, deliberate participant in not giving up to the easy deflation of life through the pin-holes evil quietly pokes through the tires. To keep caring. To keep believing that life, hope, joy, and love are ultimate and indestructible realities. However, they are not automatic or passive realities. They are living, relational realities that depend on patience, trust, and persevering in the ongoing and vulnerable work of repair and maintenance.    Ultimately though, it is God’s regard, his hands-on care that will accomplish the grand work of reclamation in us and in this world. He has not forgotten us like old farm implements crumbling in the corner of some derelict barn. He has big plans for this little plot of earth, and there is a plot to earth—a story, a frame, under all this rust and decay.     When the long-exiled Israelites returned to their homeland under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, the whole place was a hopeless ruin, and the state of the land mirrored the people’s broken down hearts. I’ve always thought it was interesting that the way to reclaim the people was to fix up the place. They got to work, stacked the stones, patched up the walls, put a fresh coat of paint here and there. For me, it’s been changing the oil, putting fresh tires on, a new carburetor, greasing the joints. It’s messy work, but, strange as it may sound, it sparks something deep in me to work at it. And, it’s hard to explain how good it felt, after years and years of absence, to hear the raucous old joy of the engine’s rumble when it finally cranked again a few days ago. I was a little boy out on his daddy’s farm, eager to hit the trail.  The post S6:E1 – Reclamation: Fixing up a Four-Wheeler appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees - Jonathan Koefoed “Moonlight in the Desert: Singing the Sojourner’s Song” by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/OTW_S5-E17-Koefoed-Essay.mp3 Jonathan Koefoed is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Belhaven University, where he teaches courses in American history and the history of thought. He is particularly interested in the dynamic relationship between ideas, their historical context, and the way that any historical idea or author can illuminate the ubiquitous human quest for a good life. His previous intellectual journey involved postdoctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin, a PhD in History from Boston University, an MA in Historical Theology from Saint Louis University, and a BA in Philosophy and History from Arizona State University. His scholarly research focuses on transatlantic intellectual history, particularly the romantic movement and its influence on US thought and culture. His articles have appeared in Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations and Religions, and his reviews have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Transatlantic Studies and American Nineteenth Century History. By The Rivers of Babylon by Matthew Clark   The endless voices whisper, all our hopes are only dreams No Deliverer is coming, that we are blind in our belief  but in the land where we all sojourn, with its beauty and its ash I will sing still for the Kingdom and a King who’s coming back    CHORUS by the rivers of Babylon  we will sing a gospel song in a foreign land   While the nations all are raging, hear the Lord in heaven laugh  we will stand upon his promise, the ways of men will never last,  and like a seed is to a tree, in the twinkling of an eye  we will see the heavens open, we will meet him in the sky   CHORUS   BRIDGE there will be no word for lonely In the Kingdom Jesus brings Every fear shall be forgotten  and all will be made clean   all the merciful will know him  The pure will touch his face See the children bear his banner  and the slandered share his name   Soon the river of our exile  Will become a holy spring  While the bent tree with its bitter fruit  It will never grow again    Now, the face that showed us kindness  Met our thirst by Jacob’s well  He will clothe us in his garments  He will marry us himself ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E17 – A Tale of Two Trees: Jonathan Koefoed, “Moonlight in the Desert: Singing the Sojourner’s Song” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees - Susan Cowger, "Time Between the Times" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/OTW_S5-E16-Cowger-Essay.mp3 Susan Cowger is the author of a poetry collection, Slender Warble (Wipf & Stock/Cascade, 2020), and a chapbook, Scarab Hiding (Finishing Line Press, year 2006). Founder and editor emeritus of Rock & Sling, her most recent publications include Ekphrastic Review, Windhover, Perspectives, Crux, McGuffin, Presence, and In A Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (2019). She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University and her BA in Art with teaching credentials from Montana State University. Married to Dana for forty-seven years, she has four children and twenty-two grandchildren. (I know, she finds this rather shocking too.) Contact her on Facebook and at susancowger.com. In the Waters by Matthew Clark   I was scared for my life  Saw the ship was capsizing  And the Lord lay asleep while the storm raged  I was losing my mind  All the darkness was blinding  Till the Lord with a word stilled the chaos  In the waters, in the waters    I’ve seen life go so wrong  Seen the best sink in sadness  Till the dark seemed their only companion But I’ve seen Jesus come save Walking out upon the waves  With his feet planted firm in the madness   In the waters, in the waters    Interlude    And some days nothing makes sense   Lord, the still place is spinning  And the center can’t hold for much longer  So won’t you bring us your song  As the howling grows stronger    Your voice is an anchor, Your voice is an anchor, Your voice is an anchor to me In the waters, in the waters    BRIDGE I can hear it, I can hear it, I can hear it coming through    Through the storm, through the darkness (I can hear it coming through) In the places I was sure your love had left me  Every night I was sleepless  But the beauty of the moonlight was you singing  When the flames tore the house down There were friends who became my home and family  So I know you will not fail  That your love, my God, endures forever    ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E16 – A Tale of Two Trees: Susan Cowger, “Time Between the Times” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees: Anita K. Palmer, "Mercy in the Wind" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/OTW_S5-E15-Palmer-Essay.mp3 Anita K. Palmer has always turned to pen and paper to figure out what she thinks, feels, and believes. That propensity launched a career when she fell into editing a Christian publication, which—unrelated to her hiring—soon went to magazine heaven. The experience failed to squelch an appetite for editorial work that included thirteen years in daily newspapers and five as a university media relations officer. For two decades she has worked with publishers and individuals on upward of 125 nonfiction books, and has written more web content, blog posts, newsletters and marketing materials than she cares to count. Born and reared in Southern California, she now lives in Colorado. She is blessed with many dear friends and one kind and brilliant adult son. Take to the Fields  by Matthew Clark   I saw a man with a bleeding heart  A bleeding heart  Ragged as the wind, eager to begin  Oh, his eyes they were clear as gold  Searching out the crags   Tender, strong and sad  Gave up all he had, left his home behind him  Gone a-seeking    CHORUS If you got eyes to see Come keep watch with me  If you got ears to hear  I pray you know  The Lord is near   I saw a house full of shepherds in repose  Moths ate off their clothes  All naked emperors, wrapped in soothing words  But you skinned your knees when you slid to break my fall  I howled up at the moon  When the salt got in the wound, the fire licked my tomb  And fire rolled like water there to cleanse me    So take to the fields, oh take to the roads  Wonder at the thorns that bite into the rose  Cut down to the bones Take your pail and gather where you can  The field is ripe with grain, and scattered sheep like sand  Too little callous on my hands, there is mercy on the wind  If you can hear it  ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E15 – A Tale of Two Trees: Anita K. Palmer, “Mercy in the Wind” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

Amber Salladin, "Singing the Feast of the New Creation" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/OTW_S5-E14-Salladin-Essay.mp3 Amber Salladin is a conductor, pianist, worship leader, singer, organist, and educator based in Manhattan, New York. Amber has worked in churches and for professional choruses in Vancouver, Canada, and London, UK. She is the Music Director at Emmanuel Anglican Church, Arts and Ministry Director for the C. S. Lewis Foundation, Music Teacher at Geneva School of Manhattan, conductor of the Academy for Teachers Chorus, Online Leader for United Adoration, and Principal Pianist and Board Member of the New York Session Symphony. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Jim and their two boys Caleb (boy soprano) and Peter (future electric guitarist). The Word Became Flesh by Matthew Clark Driving up to Memphis  A bitter winter night it was  When my engine froze to death  And I called you from the roadside    You left your bed and drove the miles to find me The frozen street turned into home with family   CHORUS The Word, the word, the word … became flesh    I sat down at your table  And the plate you set before me  In your small apartment kitchen  Was a simple meal you made    But the bread we broke flung wide the palace doors  And I tasted of the goodness of the Lord   BRIDGE What you’ve got to give is what he gave to you  Like a still small voice, it may not seem like it’s enough  But you can let the song ring out in a wilderness of doubt Ever since the word became flesh     God he opened up his mouth  The sun rose bright as a golden ring  When he knelt to say ‘I love you’  A bride awoke to sing     Don’t think your voice too poor to join the song  The smallest touch moves symphonies along ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E14 – A Tale of Two Trees: Amber Salladin, “Singing the Feast of the New Creation” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees: Lancia Smith, "Reaching for the Unseen" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/OTW_S5-E13-Lancia-Smith.mp3 Lancia E. Smith is an author, photographer, teacher, and business owner. She’s the Founder and Executive Director of Cultivating Magazine and its discipleship and creative team, The Cultivating Project. She has served in executive management, church leadership, school boards, and art and faith organizations for over thirty years. A recovering addict herself with more than forty years of sobriety, Lancia has done extensive support counseling. Her defining life focus is discipleship, expressed through mentoring, nurturing, and teaching. Lancia and her husband Peter make their home in the Black Forest of Colorado Springs.  Let your roots go deep Sit with me and talk awhile, Here while there’s a quiet hour  We’ll whisper with these witnesses, These steady stars  Who shine out in the universe, Marking out this path of ours  That only faith has eyes to see, That ends in joy   CHORUS  Oh, let your roots grow deep Is the word of truth you heard beginning to grow faint?  Let your roots grow deep, Let your roots grow deep  Don’t give up the fight just yet, Fix your eyes on Christ and  Let your roots grow deep, Let your roots grow deep     Drink deep from the Holy Fount, Whom angels praise and heaven crowns He washes weary pilgrim feet with Riversong  And even though this riverbed does not bear a river yet  These trees that grow know underground, Deep waters wait    CHORUS    The Kingdom that we see ahead, t he joy of our inheritance  Is built upon a Cornerstone the world rejects So, if today you hear his voice, Still and small amidst the noise  Don’t miss the call to fall into, His open arms   BRIDGE  Oh, let your roots go deep ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E13 – A Tale of Two Trees: Lancia E. Smith, “Reaching for the Unseen” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees: John Barnts, "Downside Up" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/OTW_S5-E12-Barntss-Essay.mp3 John Barnts wishes he could spend all his time reading, writing, and talking about interesting things. Unfortunately, books cost money, and words are hard to sell, so he spends most of his time playing piano for schools and churches, and working as a case manager in a local Drug Court program in Madison, Mississippi. John and his family moved to Mississippi in 2011 to attend seminary, which led to five glorious years of teaching the Bible at the college level. Before Mississippi, he spent twelve years at a private K-12 in Los Angeles as a music teacher and administrator. He is currently working on a non-fiction book project, teaches a couple of home Bible studies, and makes short theological videos with his son on YouTube called Barnts in the Belfry.     Follow You Down by Matthew Clark Whoever would lose their life  They will save it    CHORUS  I wanna be in your story, Jesus I wanna follow you down, down, down   Whoever would save their life  They will lose it    BRIDGE Your love is teaching me a new story  ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E12 – A Tale of Two Trees: John Barnts, “Downside Up” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees: Jason Smith, "The Pit and the Power" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/OTW_S5-E11-Jason-Smiths-essay.mp3 Jason Smith serves on the board of An Unexpected Journal, as a strategist for the C. S. Lewis Foundation, and as the senior editor for acquisitions and development at Wootton Major Publishing. In his spare time, he works a day job as a marketing director for a medical device engineering firm, where he writes about fun things like FDA regulations and embedded cybersecurity. As J. Aleksandr Wootton, he is the pseudonymous author of the much-loved young adult fantasy series Fayborn and reviews every book he reads at www.goodreads.com/mrwootton. When I Cried Out (Psalm 40) by Matthew Clark   When I cried out from the pit that I had dug His song burst past the dead end grave Isaiah’s burning ember came and kissed me on the mouth And I knew there was still music to be made   CHORUS After all that I’ve seen, I cannot seal my lips Even when my heart fails within me,  For the Lord did not hide, no, he listened in his mercy And his song of lovingkindness still persists  Though I do not understand it, I am standing on this    All my troubles when they swelled into a crowd  The shame of failures too many to count  Then I whispered through the tangle, and you looked me in the eyes I found quiet that sang louder than those lies    CHORUS BRIDGE I thought I had to climb that holy hill to twist your arm  But when you bent to wash my feet,  I knew that I’d been wrong    CHORUS  © 2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E11 – A Tale of Two Trees: Jason Smith, “The Power and the Pit” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees: Steven Elmore, "Sustained by Joy" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/OTW_S5-E10-SElmores-essay.mp3 Steven Elmore is the President of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. He has over 20 years of experience working at nonprofit organizations and educational institutions, including serving as a community college adjunct professor (English composition), software instructor (basic to advanced MS Office), GED instructor (science, history), test preparation tutor, and in a wide range of office management and administration roles. His specific skill sets include event management, teaching/training, team leadership, program management, writing, communications strategy, strategic planning, and computer technology. He is also a writer for Cultivating Magazine.   Like A Lamb by Matthew Clark Fear and pride are just two sides, friend  Of Caesar’s tarnished penny  Quietness and rest belong to God  But who hasn’t studied warfare  On the battlefield of life here  Perfecting self-defense just to survive?    You know how good it feels, love  To scratch the itch of anger  But complaining only chains us up inside Feels like safety and power  In a world so full of danger  It feels like danger to be grateful, small, and quiet    CHORUS But Oh, I see the Mighty Word of God Go silent to the slaughter like a Lamb Oh, I hear the voices of the crowd  Grow louder as the buried kernel’s roots descend     Cause the roots beneath the surface  Search and listen for a music  That is and was and will be evermore  Like an acorn to an oak tree  Who would ever think it could be  That those little lambs might ever rule the world    But the meek will spread their branches  Above the clamour of the nations  The sons of God will rest beneath their shade  And the politics of power   That seemed so strong until that hour  Will fall into the traps their power laid     CHORUS    BRIDGE Nobody’s free from hardship  And the briers in the garden  Can push their way so deeply down inside  Till what started out so tender  Is choked out by the winter  And gentleness don’t have a chance to flower    But don’t let your love grow cold, dear  or buy the lies they’ve sold here  For the fools of God will fiddle on the roof  All their lives they were the punchline  Now their laughing faces outshine  Every image Caesar thought would get him through  ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E10 – A Tale of Two Trees: Steven Elmore, “Sustained by Joy” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees - Benjamin Holsteen, "Sing an Exile's Love Song" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/OTW_S5-E9-ToTT_Bens-Essay.mp3 Benjamin Holsteen believes that a life spent in pursuit of awe, wonder, and gratitude in the midst of the everyday is the best preparation for an eternity spent in the presence of their ultimate Source. He spends his days thinking, writing, talking, and living out of this conviction, currently as a PhD candidate in Art and Theology at the University of St Andrews. He lives on the edge of the North Sea with his wife and two children. You can find him online from benjamin.omg.lol and subscribe to *Transcendent Mixtapes*—his forthcoming newsletter reflecting in writing on religious life in the 21st century, filtered through a lifetime of obsessive pop music listening—at transcendentmixtapes.substack.com. How can we sing?  by Matthew Clark   Our captors cracked their whips and grinned  Down by the rivers of Babylon They laughed and mocking bid us sing  Down by the rivers of Babylon   So we hung our harps upon a withered tree  Down by the rivers of Babylon And we gave up songs about being free  Down by the rivers of Babylon   Pre-Chorus Oh don’t let our love grow cold   CHORUS But how can we sing the Lord’s song  How can we sing about home?  How can we sing the Lord’s song  By the rivers of babylon?   We wake up strangers in a foreign land  Down by the rivers of Babylon Lord, dry as sand slipping through your hand  Down by the rivers of Babylon   Pre-Chorus  CHORUS   BRIDGE Oh, his love endures forever  (Lord, don’t hide your face forever)   ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP)   The post S5:E9 – A Tale of Two Trees – Benjamin Holsteen, “Sing an Exile’s Love Song” appeared first on Matthew Clark.

A Tale of Two Trees: Heidi White, "Two Trees, One Cross" by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/OTW_S5-E8-ToTT-essays_HeidiWhite.mp3 Heidi White, M.A., is a teacher, editor, podcaster, and author. She teaches Humanities at St. Hild School in Colorado Springs. She is the Managing Editor of FORMA Journal and a contributing author, speaker, and consultant at the CiRCE Institute. She is a weekly contributor on fiction, poetry, and Shakespeare on the Close Reads Podcast Network and the CiRCE Institute Podcast Network. She serves on the Board of Directors of The Anselm Society and sits on the Academic Advisory Board for the Classical Learning Test. She writes fiction, poetry, and essays, and she speaks and writes about literature, education, and the Christian imagination. She lives in Black Forest, Colorado with her husband and children. She also hosts The Daily Poem Podcast  A Tale of Two Trees by Matthew Clark   I dreamed I saw two family trees  They grew from very different seeds  One stood tall with flowered crowns And one was bent and bitter    The bitter tree bore sour fruit  That made the people eating do  Wickedness upon the earth  Until they grew to love it    The flowered tree put out its leaves  Which perfumed faintly that bitter breeze  The bent tree’s branches shook like snakes  And did their best to kill it    But up the sweetness rose again  Like children rise from water cleansed and  Though the thorns tore at their flesh  They would not stop their singing Well ages came and ages went  And it seemed the good tree’s strength was spent  While the bitter tree kept sprouting strong  And choking out its fragrance   Till one day evil’s wicked limbs  Entangled all the hopes of men  And struck that holy heartwood down  And felled the mighty timber    The crooked fingers of that tree  Took hold of earth and made it bleed  And most forgot what goodness was  Or where to go to find it    And holiness decayed to dust  The spinning world gave way to lust  And justice cracked like splintered wood  The world lay in confusion    BRIDGE A tree is known by the fruit it bears  And every day we plant ourselves In one of two families  In one of these two family trees   But no one saw the twist to come  The prophets of the stump of God  Were killed like fools and all ignored  But underneath the soil    A tender Word beneath the roots  Uncurled until a little shoot Unfurled into the poisoned air  To raise the ancient family    To stir the dormant seed of faith  And water withered hearts awake  To die upon that bitter tree  And uproot it forever    And one day soon we’ll see his face David’s branch will clear away  The stubble where the wicked grew  And Jesus will make all things new ©2023 Matthew Clark, Path in the Pines Music (ASCAP) The post S5:E8 – A Tale of Two Trees: Heidi White, “Two Trees, One Cross” appeared first on Matthew Clark.