On the Common 111

Bad Weather and Perfect Children.

Hi everyone,

I’m writing this from a window seat at one of Charlotte’s food halls. Outside on the lawn, three Boston Terriers are wearing matching sweatshirts.

I will ALWAYS laugh at dogs wearing clothes. In my humble opinion, it is one of the finest ways that we as humans exercise dominion over our canine companions: putting them in unnecessary garments purely for entertainment value.

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The Part Where There’s an Essay:

“This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather." - Groundhog Day

Is February the right time to think about how we don’t choose the weather? 

We’ve devoted an entire holiday to the ability (or lack thereof) of a large rodent to determine when the seasons will change. In our family, we watch the movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, every year on February 2nd. This tradition has evolved over time; we now eat pancakes for dinner on that night (“Who else could go for some flapjacks?”). I tell friends who don’t know the movie that it’s a form of the book of Ecclesiastes. The main character explores various ways to have a hopeless, meaningless existence until he’s able to break through and live selflessly.

In spite of what we might hear from the groundhog, we humans live under the humbling reality that we don’t determine the weather. Perhaps this is what makes it such a safe topic of conversation, even with strangers: we all experience weather; what’s more, we all are subjected to it. We have no choice in the matter. In spite of our best efforts with thermostats and climate control, we are utterly out of control in this arena. 

Photo by Rupert Britton on Unsplash

We lived in Southern California for a little while, and I was always amused by the planning process that went into events there. Need to plan for a church picnic, to be held outside on the field behind the church? Great, set your date. No need to make contingency plans. It won’t rain. It just won’t. How about a playdate at the local playground or a meetup at the farmers’ market? Plan on it—no need to look at the weather forecast. It won’t rain.

And it never did. The only regular weather phenomenon I observed there was the “June Gloom,” a foggy marine layer that rolled in on Memorial Day and rolled out at the end of June. Locals forecasted it on their calendars, not their weather apps. It was all very tame. (Of course, the people of California have instead traded unpredictable daily weather for things like atmospheric rivers, earthquakes, and wildfires, a trade I would not make if asked.)

Jonathan Rogers reminded us the other week that CS Lewis loved weather. Among other quotes, he featured one from That Hideous Strength, “Any child loves rain if it's allowed to go out and paddle about in it.” It’s the adults who make weather distasteful, he maintained. Children understood better. 

To be sure, during my years with four young boys in the house, I made a good practice of supplying them (and myself) with proper clothing for all weather. Remember the old Swedish adage, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing?” This truth comes into sharp relief when you are inside with little boys all day long due to undesirable weather. Better to gear up, pull on their boots, wrap another layer on yourself, and head outside. Endure it; better yet—learn to press on, and maybe enjoy it.

Is February of an election year the right time to talk about how we don’t choose our family?

GK Chesterton pokes at the idea that we usually tolerate people different from us in every other context but our family:

It  [Christmas] presupposes the possibility of families being united, or reunited, and even of the men and women who chose each other being on speaking terms. Thus thousands of young adventurous spirits, ready to face the facts of human life, and encounter the vast variety of men and women as they really are, ready to fly to the ends of the earth and tolerate every alien or accidental quality in cannibals or devil-worshippers, are cruelly forced to face an hour, nay sometimes even two hours, in the society of Uncle George; or some aunt from Cheltenham whom they do not particularly like. Such abominable tortures cannot be tolerated in a time like ours....It was never supposed that Parents were included in the great democratic abstraction called People. It was never supposed that brotherhood could extend to brothers.

-Chesterton, GK Weekly, “Christmas Must Go”

Family is one of the last spheres in which we don’t have much choice in the matter. Much like the weather, our family happens to us. It is chosen for us.

We make many choices regarding people in other spheres of life. To some degree, we usually choose our neighbors. Though we may have people we struggle to tolerate at church, we choose our churches based on things we have in common. We migrate towards friendships with those who are similar to ourselves.

All of these choices are reasonable and fine. But they do not equip us very well for the sphere of the family, where we might have chosen differently. So we look on ultra-conservative Uncle George with disdain; we shake our heads in dissatisfaction with liberal cousin Lily. Faced with the immovable differences, we flee true diversity and instead embrace the safety of sameness.

I find that a long history, either with friends or with family, usually paves the way to two different outcomes. There are relationships where the shared history allows us to give more grace and tolerate differences. And then there are the relationships where the shared history causes us to have higher standards, and thus more disappointment.

Maybe February of an election year is a good time to pull on our metaphorical rain boots and learn to love the people we haven’t chosen.

Ephesians 4:1–3

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (ESV)

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For the Anglophiles

Buckle up, kids, it’s a long one this week! TGC’s Themelios offers this history of Christianity at Oxford (specifically St Mary’s church). This is mostly an excuse to put a photo here of one of my happiest days:

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Reads & Listens of the Week

I loved this discussion of the market economy versus the gift economy from

Jonathan Rogers

over at The Habit. “The grateful response to all that goodness, truth, and beauty is to pass it along. You will have more, not less when you give it away.“

Ashley Hales

hit it out of the park with this bit on midlife: When the World is No Longer Future. “I suppose while future-orientation is necessary and provides a dopamine hit, staying the course in the middle is the long, slow, painful and beautiful way of wisdom. It is the amalgam of integrity, the crucible where loss gets turned into gratitude, and where we get to try on the garment of selflessless.”

Staying with the theme of my essay above,

Chris Martin

answers a question on “Why Is Everyone So Mean Now?”

One of the most beautiful letters I’ve seen on

Letters of Note

: My Child Was Perfect.

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Envy is bitterness at someone else’s joy. - Tim Keller