A HOLE IN THE WORLD

A Hole in the World EP was written as a companion piece to my book of the same title.  Each of the six songs was inspired by one of the grief rituals featured in my book: keening, telling the bees, casseroles, sympathy cards, tolling the bell, and death rooms.  I’m especially proud of this project because it was written and recorded in community which was a refreshing experience after the loneliness of book writing and isolation of the pandemic.  The song Oh Body was co-written with my dear friend John Lucas, and the song Where Are You Now features the voices of two other dear friends: Sarah DeShields and Erin Banks.  I hope you find the songs to be true to life, authentic, and comforting.

EMBERS

I can't say I remember the exact moment when the inspiration for this album began.  I can trace many of the themes back to a few key moment, moments they may not have been monumental in and of themselves, but were a steady prodding from the Lord and even my own artistic sensibilities that it was time to show more courage in the stories I was telling, to be more openhanded with the lessons I was learning and the secrets I was keeping.

Over the two years I’ve written these songs, I’ve huddled around campfires in Northern Iraq, cooking fires in Niger, coal fires in DR Congo, hearth fires in the mountains of North Carolina, and bonfires in my husband’s hometown in Wisconsin.  While deeply rooted in the musical style of my home in the mountains, a large part of this record is a reflection of my travel to difficult places, and a need to process the things I’ve seen and learned in those places.  They say that hardship, like fire, refines us, and that God gives beauty for ashes.  But these songs hopefully capture the uncertainty of that process, and the hushed waiting that must occur before something refined and beautiful emerges from the ash and coal.  But the prayer is for courage in the face of it all, and the freedom to speak, and in this case sing, truth.

SEVEN SONGS

Seven songs was written and recorded to serve as a companion piece to the book Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, written by my sister Rachel Held Evans. Rachel chose the sacraments to anchor her recounting of her own personal history with the church (in her own words) “because they have something of a universal quality, for even in churches that are not expressly sacramental, the truths of the sacraments are generally shared.” She wrote in the prologue:

“The church tells us we are beloved (baptism).

The church tells us we are broke (confession).

The church tells us we are commissioned (holy orders).

The church feeds us (communion).

The church welcomes us (confirmation).

The church anoints us (anointing of the sick).

The church unites us (marriage).”

While song lyrics don’t allow for the same in depth retelling of my own personal journey with the church, you will find in this album my personal reflections on how I’ve engaged with the truths illuminated by the sacraments.

SONG TO MY HEART

The best advice anyone has given me about grief is this:

You cannot go around it. You cannot ignore it. You cannot numb it. You cannot avoid it.

You cannot make it feel better. You cannot make it go away. You cannot rush the process. You cannot fill the void.

You simply have to endure it.

Our culture is not good at giving ourselves over to pain. We deny, anesthetize, and bypass at all cost. Even the church has a habit of rushing the process, of checking off the boxes next to the circumscribed laments, then quickly moving on to the bit about the hope, and the redemption, and the better days to come.

I have found that the best thing I can do for myself during this season of grief is to give myself over to it. I must treat it like a rip current and allow myself to be pulled out to sea rather than struggle against it. I must let it bury me. I must let it close in around me. And then I wait. I wait out the long, arduous work of grief, which is a labor of love - love for the one I lost, love for my family, love for myself. And love for God. I wait for the muscle and sinew of my heart to break down, reform, and begin flexing again. I wait for resurrection. God breathes in the underground, beneath the waves, off the map, and in the empty, formless void.

A Christmas song for those who don’t feel like celebrating Christmas… I wrote Looking for the Light after a season of loss. For the first time, I noticed how mirthful and merry most Christmas songs are, not to mention the general festivities of the season. Plenty of us are walking through the holidays while suffering under the silent tyranny of grief. This is a song written in the spirit of Advent, the spirit of waiting, the spirit of hoping when you feel like all hope is lost. May you fight the Light you are looking for.