Most of what I've written over the years hasn't come from mountaintops. It's come from parking lots, waiting rooms, and kitchen tables — the ordinary furniture of a life spent first as a musician, then as a pastor, and always as someone trying to pay attention.
There is a temptation, especially in ministry, to save your reverence for the sanctuary. But the poems that have stayed with me longest were the ones I almost didn't notice happening: a mother asking if she was getting better, a son quietly punching a hole in a bedroom wall, a highway at three in the morning with someone I trusted riding behind me.
Jungle of Faith is built on the conviction that grace doesn't wait for the right setting. It shows up in a coffee cup at a church board meeting. It shows up in a house that's about to be sold. It shows up, sometimes, disguised as a bad joke told at exactly the wrong moment.
If there's a discipline to this kind of writing, it's simply staying awake to the day you're actually in, rather than the one you expected. That's the practice this whole collection grew out of, one ordinary day at a time.
From the Collection
