It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work ...
Wendell Berry, 'The Real Work.'
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One night this week, desperate to find a way to pass the long hour after sunset and before dinner, I remembered a mini camping lantern we had stashed away. Hugh was smitten.
First, we used it to light up the cardboard box he's been using as a play house, collecting all his stuffed animal friends to sit in the friendly glow. Next, we looked under the couch, peered in corners and closets, and under tables. Hugh raced from room to room, carrying his little light.
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I don’t know what’s coming. I do know that, whatever it is, some of it will be terrible, but some of it will be miraculous, that term we reserve for the utterly unanticipated, the seeds we didn’t know the soil held. And I know that we don’t know what we do does. As Shane Bauer points out, the doing is the crucial thing.Rebecca Solnit, “The Arc of Justice and the Long Run” — an essay that gave me great comfort (and resolve) this week.
Other things:
- an advent of peace and justice.
- 'You should treat people like adults, which means respecting them enough to demand that they understand the consequences of their actions.'
- 'What we think of as normal shapes our field of vision; it tells a story of the world and its possibilities.'
- five fallacies about racism
- 'This is not the apocalypse'
- 'A believer is one who can remain loyal to life no matter what'
- a new map of wonders
Also: simple actions for good: signing the Southern Poverty Law Center's petition to reject hate and bigotry; for Ohioans, co-signing Senator Sherrod Brown's letter.
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I had drafted a whole other post celebrating mundane things like sweaters and filled casserole dishes, but my thoughts bent another way. So: giving a little thanks that the world has pretty, distracting things like loopy sweaters, bronze shoes, pretty earrings and Fair Trade spoons carved from stumps.
Happy Thanksgiving.
*As ever, you can click through the image above to find sources for everything pictured.
Happy Thanksgiving.
*As ever, you can click through the image above to find sources for everything pictured.
