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
On Pulling Weeds
Rachel Donahue reminds us that weeding a garden is a reminiscent practice to the renewing of our minds.
- Pulling weeds in our garden has become a bit of an escape for me. The chore I hated as a kid is now an outlet to get away from the noise of my own kids. This physical task gives my mind space to think and process life.
One day, early in the growing season, I went out one morning to hoe. I didn’t have much time, but I figured I could do a little each day and keep our garden well tended. The work was easy because the weeds were small and tender.
Truth and Lament
- For my family, like so many others, 2016 was a year punctuated by loss and grief. It was a year of watching as people we loved fought heroic battles, some ending with partings we prayed would not come. In the autumn, on the heels of all that had gone before, a new and unwelcome challenge came into our lives.
Sometimes when a storm is gathering it is possible to read the signs. A dip in temperature. An increase in wind. A darkening sky. This particular storm was unleashed without warning, tearing at our roots in its attempt to carry us, disoriented, into the unknown.
Appreciating Music: Melody
- One of the organizing factors in all of music is the melody. If music is sound organized in time (or rather the taking of dominion over sound and time), then melody is one way to help interpret or understand a piece of music. In her book The Anatomy of Melody: Exploring the Single Line of Song, Alice Parker states an apology for melody in her forward:
We are living in a culture that doesn’t value melody, one that seems to have lost touch with this primal means of expression.
What Illness Taught Me About Caring for Others
Russ Ramsey has a piece up at Relevant that walks through how he learned to care for other–particularly the friends and family of those affected by illness–through his own journey through physical illness.
- When I was struck with a bacterial infection in my heart, I had no warning. Neither did my wife, my kids, my church, my friends or my parents. It was hard to recognize at the time, but I see now that my affliction was also theirs. This is how affliction works—one person’s suffering becomes the suffering of those who love them, and we dare not deny them their own sorrow.
Around the Warren
The Art of Days – Part Two
Rebecca Reynolds continues her series of close-up examinations of life.
- IIt is not easy to teach children the reverence of sanctuaries or funerals. They recognize the absurdity of nylon tights, buckle shoes that pinch, and powdered people (be they sitting upright in pews or lying in their caskets). They wriggle at shushings, and readings, and ties – silly, choking things – for in those first years before mortality draws close, there is a hearty gap between decorum and holiness.
Thankfulness, Living Under the Name ‘Sanders’
James Witmer considers the way A.A. Milne’s original Winnie-the-Pooh books worked in his childhood imagination and the ways he feels that shaping even as an adult.
- I was young when I first read A.A. Milne’s books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. So young, in fact, that I didn’t notice his playful capitalization, giving proper names to Very Important Things. I also failed to notice any family resemblance between elephants and heffalumps, or between haycorns and acorns.
Fortunately, I was also young enough to be mentally flexible. For heffalumps my imagination supplied monsters like the big purple ogre from Bill Peet’s Cowardly Clyde. And the illustrations showed me haycorns were not grassy field corn, but nuts. So I read on, beguiled by Millne’s rollicking narration.
Exclusive: N. D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time Book 3 Cover Reveal!
We’ve got a special privilege this week at Story Warren to be the ones to reveal N.D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time Book 3 cover. To say we’re excited would be an understatement.
- We are so excited to be the first to share the cover for the Outlaws of Time finale. Here it is!
Check it out!
Something to Do with Your Kids
We’re coming up on the Fourth of July, so whether you are an American or not (we welcome Canadians to move these celebrations up three days, and all other nations to pick a date and join in the party with either country), here are some activity ideas for your family celebrations.
And Something to Watch
Did you know that the Declaration of Independence was actually voted on by the Colonies’ representatives on July 2? That’s just one of the facts you’ll learn in this brief animated history of July 4.
Thank you for reading. We’re on your side.
You can find her at carolyncgivens.com or on Facebook or Instagram at @carolyncgivens.
- The Warren & The World Vol 11, Issue 39 - November 25, 2023
- The Warren & The World Vol 11, Issue 38 - November 18, 2023
- The Warren & The World Vol 11, Issue 37 - November 11, 2023
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