The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here!
Around the Web
The Things I Don’t Say ‘Thank You’ for…
At Let Love Be Sincere, Mary writes about the things she doesn’t tell her husband thank you for.
- My sister, Theresa, pointed out last month, we do a lot more with our time when we know we are being appreciated. That has led me to reflect on how far a simple ‘thank you’ can go to encourage us in this vocation of marriage. I’ve been thinking about the necessity of grace, and being kind to one’s spouse. I’ve been trying to place myself in Aaron’s shoes, the stresses he carries, the way he serves.
I’ve been wondering how I got to a place where I forget to say thank you.
Back-to-School as Secular Liturgy
Erin Wyble Newcomb writes at Christ and Pop Culture about the ways Back-to-School is part of our liturgical calendar.
- If your kids aren’t back to school yet, you’ve no doubt noticed the barrage of back-to-school advertising promoting the end of summer and the advent of a new academic year. It’s almost like a secular liturgy, replete with the requisite over-commercialization as we move from one season into another. There are new rituals to formalize and new patterns of time and behavior to mark our days. I’ve always loved this kind of transition, its promise of new beginnings, its array of organizational materials that marked me, from childhood, as an inveterate bookworm.
Do you take advantage of this pocket of time in your day?
Carey Pace explores the blessing of audiobooks at Lasso the Moon.
- I had such grand plans about all the books I would read to my children when they were old enough to comprehend chapter books. I’m stellar at good intentions.
Then life happened.
Did it happen to you, too? My kids are eight and nine years old and I haven’t read aloud nearly as many of these novels I was going to share with them. Time is slipping through my fingers. Last spring, I took a step I had been resisting and made a compromise: Audible.
On God-Given Dreams
Kris Camealy encourages us to hold onto our God-given dreams, even when harsh words discourage us.
- On my desk, sits a notebook, a floppy moleskine purchased in a three-pack at a book store. Its nothing fancy, it’s plain, nondescript. It’s as unorganized as I am , holding within it’s pages everything from workout repetition counts, to my next book idea.There’s a page full of simple math, where I crunched numbers for the upcoming Refine Retreat, and a page full of notes from a conversation with an editor about a different project. It holds prayer requests and the random grocery list, followed by to-do’s and names of people I’d like to meet. But there are other pages in there, 3 pages in particular, that I hadn’t read since the day I scribbled across them.
I thought I could handle those words. I had just told a friend the day before, how they no longer stung and I had “moved on”, but as it turns out, that wasn’t entirely true.
Around the Warren
Smelling Like George Washington
Zach Franzen explores history and imagination.
- One of my birthday presents this year was soap. My wife bought me No. 6 soap from the Caswell-Massey company. It is the same soap George Washington, John Adams, and the Marquis de Lafayette used. The scent profile is strange. It smells medicinal, woodsy, and a little floral, and I’ve grown to appreciate it. This morning I used the last wafer-thin bit. As I sit here smelling like the 1700s, I can’t help but notice how wide the imagination is.
Living the Tales Told (Ps. 90:9)
Liz Cottrill reminds us of the ways that the stories we read as children continue to impact us.
- My 30-year-old son found out yesterday he probably has cancer, had surgery this morning, and while I was talking with him in the recovery room, he mentioned staying up very late the night before. He wasn’t worrying, he was writing.
It seems he once read a book where a dying father with many young children wrote them each a letter for them to receive on their birthdays the year after his death. My son had tucked this away in his mind, just in case he should ever find himself in that situation.
Something to Do with Your Kids
The days are beginning to get a bit shorter, and you might even find yourself with darkness hours before bedtime. Here’s a guide to the night sky you could use when you go stargazing.
And Something to Watch
This might be the best ear worm to come out of the Internet yet.
Thank you for reading. We’re on your side.
Carolyn Clare Givens is a displaced Northerner exploring the foreign ways of the South. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her literary cat, Lord Peter Wimsey. She's the author of The King's Messenger and Rosefire and in her free time helps run Bandersnatch Books.
You can find her at carolyncgivens.com or on Facebook or Instagram at @carolyncgivens.
You can find her at carolyncgivens.com or on Facebook or Instagram at @carolyncgivens.
Latest posts by Carolyn Clare Givens (see all)
- The Warren & The World Vol 13, Issue 9 - March 22, 2025
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