Good morning!
Thanks for your prayers last week. My mom finished her earthly race last Friday morning, so this week we are with my family in Massachusetts. It is still winter here — the forecast for the day of the funeral has a high temperature of 33 degrees — while back home in Charlotte, the daffodils and forsythia are in bloom.
No weekly essay this week — back at it next week, I hope.
For the Anglophiles
If I were ever going to be any kind of monger, I would not be a fishmonger or a warmonger. I would be a cheesemonger. Please enjoy this story about the couple who is putting the village of Cheddar, England, back on the map.
Reads & Listens of the Week
For obvious reasons, this article from 2005 has been on my mind this week, as my family, both immediate and extended, has been the recipient of wonderful outpourings of support and kindness: Always Go To The Funeral. “In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.”
Occasionally I reach the point where I feel a deep need to watch a good film — something beautiful to look at and consider. Last month, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast met that need. It’s shot mostly in black and white and is largely autobiographical. I recommend it highly.
You’ve heard me recommend the book You Are Not Your Own here before. Here Hannah Anderson reflects on the givenness of children, and what it means that children belong to God. “It is an act of radical embrace of all that our children are, a full delight in their being, and a refusal to try to make them after our own image.”
Even as we endure our own personal grief over my mom, the images out of Ukraine are difficult to endure. This encounter stood out to me: a woman offers seeds to Russian soldiers for their pockets so that their deaths will bear the Ukrainian national symbol, the sunflower. Our prayers are with the nation of Ukraine.
[Language warning]
Closer to Home
The brilliant defiance of the Ukrainian people this past week has been sobering and inspiring. Here’s another favorite story along similar lines: the resilience of the Girl Guides of WWII.
The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, but do not try to pretend there is no danger. Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. Make them dangerous. Make them yeast, and when they’ve grown, they will pollute the shadows. - ND Wilson, Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl