Apparently, the only available time to write with a newborn in the house is rarely, if ever. Thus far, my learning curve has been a steep one. Current time is 11:07pm, Danielle went to bed to try and get a couple of hours of sleep before the next feeding, and Ellis lies swaddled tight in his bed while making various and odd sounds as he settles in. At least I hope he’s settling in for the sake of his parents. There are no longer nights and days to occupy my life; they all blend into one big blur of endurance. Diapers, 3am feedings, more diapers, trying to scrounge up food for our tired selves, quick jaunts to the grocery or pharmacy, and all of it propelled by newfound love and the hope of humility. I don’t see how single mothers do this alone.

For good reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about peace over the past few days and, though none of this is fully formulated in my brain - I doubt if it ever will be concrete enough to make any sense - I’ve come to the minimal conclusion that peace on earth is not necessarily the absence of chaos; the two can and shall co-exist side by side and yet live in harmony as if one were dependent upon the other. Like night and day, pain and joy, cold and hot, the one endures the other. I am at peace for the first time in many years. Not my body, mind you, but the workings of my soul. I suspect it has everything to do with Ellis, seeing his precious body taken from the womb of a grace-filled woman one distant week ago, feeling his luxurious skin (don’t we all wish someone would say our skin felt “luxurious”?) upon my pursed lips, hearing and watching him squeak and squirm, cleaning his body when he fouls himself, and serving my recuperating wife to the best of my ability. It has broken me to see her in pain. And yet there is peace. Fearing my own weak-bellied imminent collapse upon the operating room floor, there was peace. With the weak knowledge that death and grief was visiting a nearby birthing room that very same night, there was peace. Easy for me to say.

Peace - the way we typically employ the word - is not an answer to the world’s problems, as those are discouragingly numerous. World peace implies the temporary truce of a war, a physical act. War will always exist here; it always has and always will. The peace to which I’m referring, and which has swaddled me these last 7 days, is the treasure of finding new life inside of old death; the realization that compassion is far more powerful than power itself. My former life is dead and gone. I played concerts for myself, wrote songs for myself, worked around the house, ate meals, all with the focus smack dab on yours truly. My son has made everything matter. And that is not a feat prompted by Ellis; it is a gift of El, Christ the Author of all. Yea, I am fully aware that to utter “Christ” as “Author”, complete with those audacious capital letters, is to wade into water that changes from smoothly agreeable to choppy and divisive in an instant, for not everyone reading this feels comfortable with such wording or the capitalization of the “G” in God and “C” in Christ. But this I can say with absolute certainty: it will forever boggle my mind to consider the fact that an adult human being, male or female, believing or unbelieving, can experience the long and mortal 9-month process from fertilization to birth and yet walk away from the entire experience having not drawn closer to the existence of an immortal God. There is far more than just a blood and water miracle in it; there is the indwelling of good on this earth, already so filled with mayhem. It is peace I’m getting at, can’t you see? Think on these things, for they shall be an altar to you.

“What can he possibly know?”, you may be asking yourself. As a parent of one week, surely not a whole lot. But I can say unequivocally that these things which my eyes have seen and my arms have held have collectively broken and healed my heart. Before, there was the hurt of aimlessness, the bouts with loneliness, the gnawing sense that something was missing in our lives. That’s not to say that my wife and I didn’t enjoy one another’s company; that’s not it at all. She and I are made even more whole, at-one-ment as Madeleine L’Engle writes, by this frail creature’s interruption.

Peace has endured on earth throughout plague, famine, prosperity, murder, hatred, discrimination, discord and the proud carryings on of humanity. Peace does not require war in order to exist. It requires a broken heart, for from inside the seed of such contrition it seeps into the living soul and begins to plant its lifelong garden, full of beauty, hope, grace and endurance. These first few weeks will be physical endurance enough. We sleep when we can, admiring these newborn moments while they are present. If it is possible to kiss the very face of peace - peace that transcends understanding - those moments surely exist right here and now. These are the moments that change the world, not the comings and goings of politicians, bankers or power-mongers. The world is made better by the smallest, most feeble and helpless ones on earth. We are made hopeful by such frailty. So be it.

I took a quick break while Danielle is resting in her room with my mom to run home, get a shower and check the mail.

Last night at 6:59pm CST Ellis Perrin Peters breathed his first breath in this giant-little world. He weighed in at a solid 5 lbs., 3.75 oz. and was in full possession of 10 fingers, 10 toes and all necessary utilities. He is, as you might expect me to utter, absolutely stunning. Currently, I have no way to post pictures (nothing grotesque) here but if it’s figured out, I’ll try to post one or two at a later time. Thanks for all your prayers and for simply caring.

Hoist a pint in the air, pull a drag on a nice stogie and whisper thanks for life, love and grace. Cheers to all. More later….
EP, DP & EPP

Real quick update….

As of this moment, there will be two dates that will forever be sewn into my puny memory (remember, friends have been calling me Pappy for years): January 19, 2007, the day our son was to be born, and December 21, 2006, the day our son will be born; a month earlier than expected and a day that I never thought would actually arrive. After our doctor’s visit this afternoon, the final decision was made to bring li’l Peters into the world early. Not a decision I was expecting. We left the doctor’s office with more than wintry cloud cover overhead; it felt like a bomb had just gone off. Rattled, shocked, scared and more than a little out of sorts, Danielle and I, with vast uncertainty filling every pore on our faces, drove to eat lunch at a nearby Chili’s, thanks in large part to a gift card that a very generous lady in Texas gave us. A list of things to do. Tonight, we shall eat our final meal as a care-free childless couple, a meal we have jokingly dubbed The Last Supper. We leave home tomorrow morning for the hospital as a duo and will return home - whenever that is - as a familial trinity of sorts. Clueless through it all I assure you. I have no idea when I’ll be able to post again, and some of you may not care to read of such personal mentions, but I’m sure I’ll have things to say in due time. Partake if you so desire. Carry on with your warm cocoa to sip and love extra on your beloved.

Merry Christmas and happy Winter Solstice-

EP

Consistent content; I’m sorry my website lacks it. Most days I don’t even know how to speak like a normal person, much less attempt to communicate in a public setting such as this. I’ll just type and see what comes about.

Awhile back, Andrew Peterson invited me to sub for Andrew Osenga whose wife was to give birth to their second child during this time. (The Osengas actually had their baby a couple of nights ago. Congratulations to them.)

A baby, a baby girl
For the body Osenga
Andy swims in estrogen
My wife is a month away from
A baby, a baby boy
For the body Peters
This, aloud, I wonder:
Will I faint during delivery?

Last Tuesday I flew to Dallas to meet up with the bus and band who had already played the first pair of shows in Texas. By the time I made it to the bus which was parked downtown at the base of that weird green-lit space needle thing by the hotel everyone was off gallivanting elsewhere. I loaded my gear in the cargo bays and sat in the bus reading the previous days’ USA Today while waiting for someone, anyone, to return. Welcome to the exciting touring life. A couple of the guys, upon their return, were kind enough to share their leftover Tex-Mex lunch since by this time I was well beyond the bewitched lunch hour and I didn’t really feel like walking far to fetch food. I’m lazy; were I paleolithic, I would have made a horrible hunter-gatherer. A spaghetti dinner in celebration of Cason’s birthday rounded out the evening and we walked back to the bus past the grassy knoll where President Kennedy was shot. I fell asleep to the comfortably familiar sway of a moving bus along highway pavement and woke up the following morning in shivering Kansas. We left a 70-degree Dallas. Stepping off the bus at the church in the morning the temps had plummeted a healthy 40 degrees. Sleet and snow fell all day. We spent the following day in Wichita, KS where it snowed hard all day long dropping several inches on the ground; a weather experience I would dub a blizzard, but which the locals would call merely a storm. So goes the errant southerner in me. Chicago the next day was covered in 12-inches of snow from the same front that pushed through Wichita. This particular show was at a private school and it felt weird to be walking the cinder-block halls and eating in a cafeteria under life-sucking fluorescent lights. I couldn’t help but recall my childhood years involving those same exercises. Several games of Boggle helped pass the downtime. I once thought I was very good at Boggle, now I know better. Never play a competitive word game with a bunch of other songwriters. Unless your name happens to be Peggy Hill. A fabulous audience in Milford, OH the following night made for a nice going home present.

Tonight’s concert is at the historic Ryman Theatre (British spelling my choice) in downtown Nashville and I’m at home for the day re-packing the suitcase, folding laundry, cleaning up a bit, catching up on email and mail-outs, and feeding our Christmas tree some much-needed water. Playing a song on the stage of the Ryman will be a fine story to tell my boy one day. We leave in the morning for another stretch of shows from Alabama to Florida. I hope there’s no more snow involved. I’ve seen it and am done with it; I don’t see how you northerners survive it year in and year out.

I’m thoroughly enjoying the company on this tour: I get to talk sports with Andy Gullahorn, ornithology with Sandra McCracken, Freedy Johnston with Jill Phillips, mandolin with Josh Coffey and food in general with AP. It’s a good season. Cheers.