Awe and Humanity
How I'm no Anne of Green Gables, & humans as the best and worst place where beauty and justice meet (also, Paddington tea parties).
Hello friend! In this newsletter, I write about making more space for beauty and justice to meet. It mostly ends up being about children’s literature, living seasonally and liturgically in the Southern Hemisphere, the history of mother-writers/creatives, and Little Women because Little Women has an answer for every life problem. When you become a paid subscriber, you help make this newsletter possible! And you support my other writing habit, which is writing children’s books. Thank you!
I’m good friends with a lot of Anne of Green Gables’s1. Like, the sort of people who will stop on a walk and clutch your arm and say, “Isn’t that view simply a poem?”
I’m not Anne of Green Gables. I mean, I love my morning nature walk. I’m aware enough to comment on our good view when we drive through town on our way to school, just as my own mother did when I was a child. “Children, look at that view! Not everyone gets to live in a place as beautiful as this!” (I have now taken up this refrain to the point that my four-year- old often sighs and comments on the view before I say it).
I read about C.S. Lewis or Madeline L’Engle being arrested by the physical beauty of nature - the piercing ache they felt seeing a distant mountain, or a calm, snow-clad field, or a slant of sunlight falling through the trees in the forest2. Emily of New Moon (another L.M. Montgomery character) talks about the strange pain she gets when she sees something beautiful, about the way the curtain between this world and the next seems to turn transparent, and the normal world shimmers with something beyond.
If you grew up in a sort of Christian-aeseticism that valued Usefulness and Practicality and Thrift above beauty, this sort of talk is either totally strange, or a welcome relief. (The patron saint of Evangelicals found God through beauty! Beauty matters! It’s okay to spend money on stained-glass windows, or spend hours on an oil painting! Jesus doesn’t hate art!) There are even whole organisations dedicated to a rennaisance in the Christian arts, emphasizing how beauty leads us to goodness and truth, and ultimately towards God. I, in fact, support such organizations.
But.
(You knew there was a but). While I surround myself with Anne of Green Gables’s, and I long to champion the arts, I must confess I have never cried over a sunset. I’ve never stared at a mountain, or a starry night, and been completely overwhelmed with awe. I like them. But I like a good cup of tea as well. I think I should probably pay more attention, and cultivating awe through the beauty of the physical world is a good spiritual discipline. But sometimes I can read these passages from the Romantic artists and feel a little on the outside. Then, thanks to Sam Jolman’s newsletter, I discovered this quote about awe:
Researcher Dacher Keltner asked the question: what brings us the most awe? He assumed it would be landscapes or music or communal religious rituals. But to his surprise, he discovered we are most moved by other humans—particularly those living with what he called moral beauty. We wow when people display courage, kindness, strength, or perseverance. In his words,“Exceptional virtue, character, or ability—moral beauty—operate by a different aesthetic.”
A different aesthetic. Don’t miss that.
We tend to think of beauty in very malnourished terms as just something pretty to look at. But beauty is far more robust than this. Beauty is about presence, not simple appearance. As John O’Donohue said, “Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness... Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming.” The substance of a thing. Its presence. It’s how our whole being is moved by someone or something—all the senses and the heart.
So yes. Nature or music can be substantial enough to move our senses and our heart.
But Humans. Moral beauty.
That’s going to get me to cry EVERY TIME. Upon reflection, I realised that usually when I want to write a poem, it’s not about a tree stump or a slant of light. It’s about people.
Like this poem, about cleaning up downtown after the looting we experienced (click through for the poem).
Or this poem, about seeing a Grandpa watching his kid in a splash pad:
Or this one, about mothers and the desperate things they do for the kids they love:
When do I cry at a painting? Not when I look at the painting, it’s when I read the author back story. It’s the humans making the art that make me cry.
Perhaps this is all to say: Maybe humanity is the best and worst place to look when you want to see where beauty and justice meet.
PS: This time last year, I wrote about awe and my kid running his first school race. What is it about cross-country season and ordinary time that inspires awe?? But apparently it does! Humans!!
📗🧾 PPS: Who are authors or artists who are celebrating the moral beauty of humanity? Or, what’s a poem that inspired awe lately? We just watched the Rabbit Room Theatre’s stage production of Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place. Beauty of moral courage (and a beautifully moving production) abounded. COMMENTS ARE OPEN!
I wrote a book!
You can read it on e-version anywhere in the world (please leave a review! So the internet can find it!) or purchase it anywhere in South Africa (Takealot, Loot, Exclusive Books, Bargin Books, etc). Also, my book giveaway is closed. Thanks to all who entered!
Just Beautiful Links
The bread butts in our house are constantly going moldy and I am always ashamed, and yet I cannot force myself or anyone in my family to eat them. This French Toast Casserole is saving my life right now. I like that it needs slightly stale bread and that I can make it the night before.
Relieved that we don’t have to force children out of bed for the next three weeks and we can all hibernate until the godly hour of 7am (or even later!) instead of hauling out of bed in the dark for school. This cheerful anthem by Mission House has been getting me going in the morning. No matter how dark and cold it is, it’s always a day for singing. My kids may hate this song now.
📖📖Books Books Books: We’ve been reading Winnie the Pooh, Paddington (there are so many of these books! They go on forever! And my 7 and almost 5 year old find the gentle catastrophes of Paddington SO FUNNY). We also re-visited the Noisy Village series by Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking fame - they think Pippi is too weird, although I want to try it again in a year or so). Noisy Village is a firm favorite. I love the right book at the right age!! In a year these books may be boring, but right now they giggle their heads off. We summoned up courage to finish What Katy Did (my 7 year old finds she gets in a bit too much trouble and that is anxiety inducing and walks out). On the recommendation of a middle-school aged friend, I’m reading Fablehaven by Brandon Mull. I’m a little underwhelmed, (and it’s making me put off the ending of Impossible Creatures* by Katherine Rundell which is FAR superior) HOWEVER I have ardent assurances that the Fablehaven series gets much better, so I’ll give it through book 2 and see. *I finished Impossible Creatures. Amazing.
New Book Rec newsletter I’m loving!
On the theme of writing stories (and reading stories) when there is global catastrophe and you’re surrounded by injustice - I wrote about that a few years ago here.
♥ We sponsored a kid to go to iThemba Kids Camp as a family. This camp lets kids in the community of Sweetwaters, South Africa have 3 days of being mentored, loved, and just having fun. Sponsoring a camper is such a great way to connect our kids to the idea of sharing and helping others. I used to work for iThemba and can vouch their camps are amazing, and their long-term community development work is even better. We watched this camp video, and we just got the photo of our camper! Camp started on June 18, but you can still give generally towards camp at iThemba’s USA partner here! And follow iThemba on Instagram to find out when to sponsor a camper next year.
My social media feed is completely schizophrenic at the moment. I’m getting all of the HIBERNATE LET US HYGGE vibes from my S.H. friends, and all the IT’S FINALLY SUuuuUUUMERRR vibes from my N.H. friends. We must be approaching the solstice. I discovered This Amazing Magazine that I can read on my Libby app called The Simple Things and it’s just exactly what I want in a magazine! It’s seasonal, it’s pretty, it has cute crafts and interviews and it’s not overwhelming. Also, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere READ OUT OF ORDER. Do not be bound by reading the June summer edition in June. I just read the November edition and am all inspired to make this weird, herbal drink after hiking on a frosty morning.
We do the same thing with our Sing a Song of Seasons poetry book that we read at breakfast. We’re currently reading December.
Great essay over here by Elizabeth Berget. Classic Liz where you’re snort-laughing, but then you’re crying. VERY HUMAN. Highly Recommend her writing.
xx Until next time, Friends!
Steph
Please help me with the plural of Anne of Green Gables?? Gableses? Anyway. The ANNES. You know who you are.
See: Any Romantic Poet. Or, take Keats, who’d clearly be hashtag PumpkinSpiceLatte : “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees….” (Keats, To Autumn 1819).