The Ryman and the Deeper Dream

Chris Wall, the executive producer and show runner for the Wingfeather Saga Animated Series, said something last year that stuck. We were gearing up for the premiere of season three, a bonkers event in a venue called the Caverns, literally a concert hall in a cave not far from Nashville. About a thousand people descended on this place, many dressed up as characters from the story, and they milled about the grounds for readings, interviews, zibzy games, and all manner of Wingfeather fun.

I was unprepared for what it would feel like driving up to the place, seeing hundreds and hundreds of families dressed as characters from my books. I was literally speechless. I tried to talk to Jamie but couldn’t because I was choked up. The event was so dreamy, culminating in all those people watching episodes 1-3 together, cheering and gasping and laughing at all the right spots. It’s impossible to express the level of gratitude I felt for the Wingfeather team for their years of hard work, the joy I experienced seeing the story come to life, the connection I sensed with all those sweet people who have opened up the magic door of their imagination to me and let my story ramble around inside their heads and hearts. (We have another premiere coming up in September, this one at Castle Park, just south of Nashville, and I have no doubt that I’ll be just as giddy.)

But what Chris said to the team before the event was that we have to find satisfaction in the work itself, not only the big moments where the work is seen and celebrated. The high we’ll feel at the premiere, he reminded us, will fade quickly, and what we’re left with on Monday morning is the work. Yes, it’s right to high-five each other for a job well-done, but it’s important to find deep pleasure in the day-to-day. Because what happens if the premiere (God forbid) is a flop? What happens if it doesn’t rise to the level of our hopes, or if our expectations are unreasonable? We’ll show up Monday for work with dread, a sense of futility, or (God forbid) burnout. Basically, enjoy the victories, but keep them in their proper place. They’re not the main event. The main event is the diligent work of every day.

I bring all this up because of the show I played last week at Ryman Auditorium. It was, truly, a career highlight. After nearly thirty years in Nashville, and close to fifty concerts at the Ryman, it was the first time I’ve put on a solo concert at that storied venue. I was nervous about it for close to a year. Without the security blanket of all the special guests a the Behold the Lamb of God and Resurrection Letters shows, would people be disappointed if it was just me and a guitar and a few musicians?

Well, I’m happy to report that we were close to sold out, the crowd was amazing, and it’s hard to remember having so much fun at a concert. What I hoped for was to slow down enough to tell some stories, forget some lyrics, call some audibles, and really savor the evening—rather than feeling the pressure of an event-level concert like Behold, where I’m always conscious of the show’s run time, basically emceeing the night’s many musicians and guests. This night would just be me and my small acoustic touring band: Thomas Griffith, Johan Glidden, and Lincoln Mick on piano, guitar, and mandolin, respectively. Brandon Hays and Matt Pierson played drums and bass on a few songs, and Buddy Greene would come out for a cameo, but that was it. I decided early on to keep it simple, to resist the temptation to pull out all the stops and invite a zillion friends to join me, and let me tell you, the temptation was strong.

But in the end, I mostly resisted. I played some songs that were twenty-five years old, I pulled from all of my albums, I allowed myself the freedom to ramble a bit. My whole family was there that night, along with a lot of friends from our church and community. It was so fun and gratifying my main thought when it was over was that I wanted to do it all again the next night, and the next. I have no idea if it’ll ever happen again. Lord willing, it will, but I’m old enough to know that you never know.

The next day I woke up bleary-eyed and drove straight to a Rabbit Room event celebrating twenty years of the ministry. I came home afterward and harvested some cucumbers from the garden, some blueberries from the bushes. Asher and I went back to the Ryman the very next day to see a Max Richter concert, and I had the bizarre feeling of being an audience member just 24 hours after standing on the stage, which brought home the point marvelously. Later I sat in the front field with a good friend and we smoked pipes and sketched a tree. We watched the fireflies come out and wandered down to the pond at dusk. Jamie and I watched a bit of a World Cup game and we went to bed. The next day we went to church, then had Ladybird Tacos with the kids since it was Father’s Day.

It hit me today that this is real life. The elation of the big show last weekend was precious and fleeting and truly wonderful, but it’s not the main event. The main event was playing a board game with my in-laws last night and weeding the garden today. It’s checking the beehives and bumping into neighbors at the barbecue restaurant and hauling the trash bin up from the road and harvesting about twenty ripe peaches from the tree I planted fifteen years ago. It’s good to have songs to sing, but it’s better to have something to sing about. This is what Paul surely meant by urging us in 1 Thessalonians 4 to make it our ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind our own business and work with our hands.

All that to say a massive thank you to Johan, Lincoln, Brandon, and Thomas for doing the work of real life alongside me for many years, to Christie and her stellar team for the million little things that make a single concert happen, to Harold Rubens for working tirelessly behind the scenes to make the stage look and sound beautiful, to Quinn and Matt and the crew for working diligently and cheerfully to make the mountain of little things work, and to the many folks who braved the airports and the interstates and the Nashville traffic to come to the show. The concert was a dream come true. The deeper dream, though, is to have friends and family to do life with, to forgive and be forgiven, to get up at dark-thirty to catch a plane to Timbuktu and do the long, tedious work of just getting to the cities and to the venues and to the hotel afterwards. It’s kneeling at church and receiving the elements and having your pastor, who is also your friend, remind you of Jesus’s body and blood.

This is the quiet life; this is the work of our hands. May the Lord establish it for his glory.