Welcome to Thursday,
Do you have names for inanimate objects in your home?
My car is named Bill the Pony (you Tolkien nerds understand, he could never be Shadowfax), and our pool vacuum is called by some Bruno (because we don’t talk about him) and by others, Robosuck.
Your turn.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Out of Their Want
want (noun): deficiency, lack
The news pictures showed the worst of it: the rivers cresting and engulfing buildings, streets, parks, and people in their reach. As we drove through Biltmore Village two weeks ago, the signs still said ridiculous phrases like “Closed for Remodeling,” hung on the stripped walls of gutted restaurants.
Where we stay in the mountains is a tiny town called Swannanoa. It’s between two bigger tourist towns, Asheville (which you’ve probably heard of) and Black Mountain (which you haven’t, but you should). Swannanoa sits right alongside the (you guessed it) Swannanoa River. Our rental is up the side of a hill, the likes of which our cars would never see here in the Charlotte area. Gravel, gulleys, and hairpins—up and down we go.
At the base of the hill stands a church:
It is still standing, kind of.
On Sunday morning, on the recommendation of a friend, we went to worship with a local congregation. They gathered, sang, read Scripture, announced VBS, hugged, and shook hands. The sermon was on Proverbs chapter two. The communion hymn was “Come Ye Souls, By Sin Afflicted.”
The announcements, prayer time, and conversation made it clear that Hurricane Helene is still very much a “thing that is happening,” not a “thing that happened.” Congregants wore t-shirts from various aid agencies. Meetings were scheduled for the next project, and volunteers were requested.
When it came time for the deacons’ offering, a benevolent tradition on the last Sunday of the month, the pastor announced that the money would be going to tornado victims in Missouri, who suffered losses in mid-May.
Read that sentence again.
When the pastor announced this, people nodded along in agreement. He said that they felt that they were OK…for now. Next month would be another thing. But for now, people in Missouri needed it more.
Immediately, I was reminded of Paul’s esteem for the Macedonian church:
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.
2 Corinthians 8:1-5
To give out of one’s abundance is one thing. To give out of one’s poverty…it is something else.
For the Anglophiles
A couple of years ago, The Championships at Wimbledon had the brilliant idea of this “Overheard” series. Enjoy:
Reads & Listens of the Week
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but my day job has changed: I’m now the Managing Editor and Outreach Coordinator over at Story Warren. One of my favorite older pieces is getting a rerun this week: He Loved the World: A Short Biography of EB White.
A bit from Alan Jacobs on social media and Middlemarch: Nobody Learns Anything. “One of the primary purposes of short-form social media, it seems to me, is to prevent us from getting to that point of self-understanding. Bluesky means never having to say you’re sorry.”
I enjoyed this chat between friends Russell Moore and Andrew Peterson, on the Authors Who Kept Us Christian. (Of course I did.)
Andrew Wilson writes on Where to Find Your Happy Place. This article pricked my heart and encouraged me. I recommend listening to Andrew read it (click the feature at the top!). “There’s a lot more joy in this world than there needs to be.”
Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are 'patches of Godlight' in the woods of our experience. -- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
Will definitely be listening to the Andrew Peterson / Russell Moore chat!