Hello,
I am sitting in a coffee shop at the moment, and a beautiful Saint Bernard has just entered alongside her owner. She is calm and well-behaved. The little boys at the next table immediately yelled, “DOG!” and I did the same thing inside my heart.
It brought to mind the night David and I watched the Machester Derby at a pub called The Barley Mow in Westminster. There the floor of the bar was almost entirely consumed by a gigantic long-haired dog. In my memory, he is closer to the size of a hippopotamus than a dog. I think the pub was actually his property. He snoozed amidst the feet of excited soccer fans, and everyone gladly stepped around him.
The Part Where There’s an Essay:
Peonies always remind me of my maternal grandmother.
Nana was a tiny woman; she used to recite her height as “four-foot-eleven-and-a-half” and Lord help you if you left off the half. I remember her working tirelessly whenever we were at the farm. She mopped every day, which was a necessity with the amount of mud that was tracked in across her kitchen linoleum. She hung sheets out on the line, even in the winter. They had a dryer, but she didn’t use it much.
Amidst the chaos of managing a dairy farm alongside my grandfather, Nana had tiny domains that she still lorded over for the sake of pure beauty and joy. One of them was the front yard, where the feeders and birdhouses served the local bluebird population. She guarded this space vigilantly. She was known to interrupt herself, leaving a pot on the stove or dishes floating in soapy water, to run out the door, waving a dishtowel over her head, screaming at whatever predators were threatening the bluebirds.
It was a seasonal war. With every spring came a new generation of blue jays and snakes, intent on disrupting her beloved bluebirds’ peace. She never yielded an inch. The farm cats knew better than to tangle with her. She was the alpha predator when it came to the yard around the house, and the birdhouses were her territory. Any barn cat would be a fool to take a swipe at them.
I thought of Nana this week as I watched my peonies slowly open. I have never planted peonies before, though I always loved them from afar. Nana’s front yard was always rimmed by loads of red peonies, nestled in beds against her house. “Full of ants,” my mother sometimes declared as we mounted the red brick stairs to the front door, and she was right—they do attract ants.
There is an old wives’ tale that peonies need ants to bloom. Some people wrongly believe that the flower buds require the help of the ants to open up. Instead, the relationship is more one of mutual benefit: the ants feed on the nectar around the blooms, and the peonies are protected by the ants, who fend off other flower-consuming species. Once the blooming cycle is complete, the ants move away.
Farm life in the Northeast made my mother and my grandmother imminently practical. There, the growing season is short, the soil is rocky, and the winter is merciless. So it gives me pause that Nana gave time to the beauty like she did. There was a full vegetable garden to tend to, animals to feed, children to raise–why bother with the peonies?
Beauty and practicality also form a relationship of mutual benefit. Neither needs the other, but they are kind friends. When I embrace both, this is obvious to me.
When I forsake practicality for beauty, the meals aren’t planned, the laundry piles up, and the cars run out of gas. People don’t get where they need to go.
When I forsake beauty for practicality, the chores become drudgery, the car rides are monotonous, and people are an inconvenience. The Gospel becomes a frustrating exercise in legalism instead of the beautiful redemption tale that it is.
When they’re allowed to run in harmony, beauty and practicality provide us with twin rails to run on. Beauty lends meaning to the practical; practicality enables beauty to come to full fruition.
For the Anglophiles
The Prince and Princess of Wales celebrated their thirteenth wedding anniversary on Monday. Yes of course I watched the wedding live, and I hold this little lady especially close to my heart:
There’s a moment in every complicated wedding day when the noise and expectations have been quite enough for the littlest participants, thankyouverymuch.
Grace is about my daughter’s age, if I did the math right. She is probably now living a teenage life and trying hard to forget about this picture. Sorry, Grace. I love it.
Reads & Listens of the Week
Mother’s Day is approaching, and that usually means that Proverbs 31 will be everywhere. I enjoyed this brief reminder that in part, the chapter is meant to be a portrait of Lady Wisdom (remember her from Chapter 1?).
One of the patron saints of this newsletter is Andy Crouch; I was grateful for this bit from Trevin Wax about Andy’s emphasis on friendship in a time of turmoil. “Both of them step in when they don’t have to, bind themselves to another person and say, ‘Wherever you’re going, I’m going. I am not giving up on you, and please don’t give up on me.’”
Jonathan Rogers’ interview with Leif Enger is an absolute delight, including the bit at the end when Jonathan drops a fun fact about Nora Ephron. Leif responds in happy shock. The whole thing is a joy. These guys are two of my favorites.
From The Atlantic, a bizarre bit on the largest cruise ship in history (contains language). “About halfway through, Shteyngart called his editor and begged to be allowed to disembark and fly home. His desperate plea was rejected, resulting in a semi-sarcastic daily log of his misery.”
I am always last to see the beauty I inhabit. - Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse
We used to have peonies from Kraig’s grandfather’s garden. The sad news is, East Texas isn’t great for peonies. The happy news is, my Michigan neighbor transferred many of our peonies to her yard when we moved, and my parents and a friend took some to their homes in more northern climes when they moved.