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
How These 3 Words can Stop What’s Stealing Your Joy
Ann Voskamp looks at three words that can help when you’re stuck in the comparing and competing race.
- So this kid? She’s apparently got a problem when it’s her kid sister’s birthday.
And yeah… it’s understandable.
I mean — who really especially likes it, or finds it easy, when the other kid gets the big cake?
Or the big gifts. Or all the flashing cameras on her grinning mug smiling pretty over candles?
I mean — I saw it once at a parade: women jockeying for a better position.
Turns out it doesn’t matter a hill of beans how old you are, how wise you are, or how you’re sitting pretty — the more you let yourself compete and compare, the more you forget your own calling.
21 Ways to Limit Screen Time for Kids
Sally at Real Mom Nutrition shares collected wisdom from parents in the trenches of summer screens.
- IWhen you’re as angsty about screen time as I am, you talk to a lot of moms about it. Here are the ones at the extremes:
1. The mom who says heck yeah, her kids are on screens–a lot. “How would I ever get anything done otherwise?” she asks you, like you are a crazy person.
2. The mom who says they don’t even own a television (she may or may not say this loudly enough so that all mothers around her are sure to hear). And even if they did own a television, her child would be too busy reading The Little Prince in its original French to bother with it anyway.
Wisdom & Wonder Week 4 Booklist
Over at Redeemed Reader they’ve got a booklist with options for all ages on the theme of “Which Path and With Whom.”
- Week 4 Theme: Which Path and With Whom
Additional Proverbs to Read and Think About
14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man . . .
17:10 A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.
21:30 No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord.
23:23 Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.
29:1 He who is reproved and stiffens his neck will be broken.
Making Mounds
Rachel Donahue shares another lesson she learned in her garden.
- Now, just the day before I had successfully completed a neat row of mounds all on my own at the other end of the garden, so my frustration wasn’t from a lack of ability or an insufficiency of knowledge on how to mound a row. This fact only fed the fury in my mind.
I carefully copied Mick’s method, starting where he started, hoeing at his pace. I kept comparing my efforts to his, but he was consistently faster and my mounds were consistently out of place.
I gave up and walked away to pull weeds and blow off steam.
Around the Warren
Anticipating The Right-Side-Up World Through Imagination
Sam Smith reminds us what we mean when we talk about holy imagination.
- An old man kneels by a fire, telling imaginative tales to eager children. They hang on his every word, transported from their world to another. Their world is beautiful, but broken. He speaks into their hearts words that string together to form new worlds, anticipating the one which will surely come. These are the seeds of the unseen world.
N.T. Wright, in a lecture on the impact of the Resurrection of Jesus, has said this:This is the hope of the artist with holy imagination.
Review: The King’s Messenger
Glenn McCarty makes me cry when he writes lovely things about my little book.
- “They also serve who only stand and wait.” With this excerpt from John Milton’s poem “On His Blindness” serving as an epigraph to the opening chapter, The King’s Messenger – the debut novel from writer and Story Warren contributor Carolyn Clare Givens – reveals both the debt it owes to classic literature, and its commitment to carrying on these literary traditions. According to Givens in the notes at the back of the book, her story came to her “many years ago” in a college literature class and has wound its way slowly but surely to release this June in both print and digital form.
The King’s Messenger tells the story of Smuggins, one of eight appointed messengers to the ruler of a medieval kingdom. Smuggins’ job is to serve the King by responding to whatever task is set before him: traveling to take messages, protecting guests of the kingdom, or simply running errands within the central city of the kingdom, or beyond.
Something to Do with Your Kids
The Kids Activities Blog is doing a Fun with Letters series that has great activities for each letter of the alphabet for your future readers. They’re on the letter F this week, but you can catch up on previous weeks on their blog.
And Something to Watch
In this short film, you get to meet Poodle Roo the rooster who knew he was different. Poodle Roo wouldn’t return to his coop at night, and his keepers at Apricot Lane Farms couldn’t figure out why. Poodle Roo found a place to belong, even though he didn’t fit in.
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.
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