Happy Holy Week
take a breath; see the beauty
Hello friends, and for those celebrating - happy holy week.
Yesterday was Passover. Sunday is Easter, the holiest of holidays for Christians. We're in the midst of Ramadan. Congress is taking a two-week recess.
So it feels like a good time to take a little breather.
Let’s go outside and take a deep breath of cool, spring air.
In New Hampshire, spring is fighting hard to break out of winter. But yesterday I saw a little green leaf and spot of red rhubarb working its way out of the (still) snow-covered earth. It’s happening…
Does beauty matter?
Read this passage from Susan Cain’s newsletter, author of Bittersweet.
From the great British author, C.S. Lewis, best known for “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe,” and his other children’s fiction. But he’s written so many profound essays, quotes from which are taped up all over my writing desk.
Here are two of my favorite passages.
The first one has to do with beauty – on why it matters so much. It seems like a frippery. How could it be worth our attention, compared to everyday horrors like poverty, hunger and war?
“But C.S. Lewis knew what he was talking about. He’d come close to death, himself, in the terrible trenches of World War I. And on the eve of WWII, he asked this question, in a famous lecture he gave at Oxford University:
“Does beauty matter when bombs start falling?” [h/t Jash Dholani]
Here is his beautiful (pun intended) answer.
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would have never begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Life has never been normal, Lewis is telling us - the precipice is never far away.
So don’t put off your quest for beauty and excellence. That very quest is an expression of our best and noblest selves -- because it turns us in the direction of the good.
Dostoevsky once observed that ‘beauty will save the world.’ And people often wonder what he could have possibly meant by this. I think that this is the answer.
-Susan Cain
❤️ Amy
Good News and Story Links
Mark Your Calendars: Come see me at Andover New Hampshire Hub on April 19th, 7pm to talk about writing. Free!
Want to Leave an Early Review? Read The McNifficents on Netgalley
The Perfect Easter Song?!: Ain’t No Grave by Molly Skaggs (do you like it or Johnny Cash’s version?)
Wait! And this song, too: Thank God I do by Lauren Daigle
