I write too much about politics, which is to say about the trivial, and now feel appropriately guilty and small. I can’t say I wasn’t warned; Amy Welborn seems to strike a much better balance between curiosity and spirituality.
My stepson sent a rather remarkable letter (snail mail no less) to his widowed aunt after talking to her at a birthday party on Sunday.
He’s been reading the Victorian novel Middlemarch and wrote it in that style, having been blown away by learning of his aunt's rescue operation of her grandson-by-marriage, Richard. He’s been bullied and doing poorly in his school district so he’s come to live with her during the week and go to school locally where he is thriving and has friends.
Aaron quotes Eliot’s novel, saying that it reminded him of her:
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
He closes with:
“Be blessed in the knowledge that you and the company of saints are encouraged that you live a faithful life and let these blessings be compounded knowing your faithful life is not hidden from, nor will be forgotten by, the rest of us.”
Not that one should be envious of your brother or sister’s excellence but...
Despite the absence of virtue on the political stage there are regular reminders of OPE (other people’s excellence) closer to home. I heard today that Mrs. Darwin, 43, is pregnant with her 8th child. Her killer line is, in some ways, so reflective of the divine imperative: “I find that I'm still fruitful, just not in the ways that I choose.”
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