years of summer children running barefoot free in the dusty roads ‘til dusk …
years of summer children running barefoot free in the dusty roads ‘til dusk …
Each spring I wait for our blue irises to bloom in June. Typically, on a fine day in February, unlike true gardeners who do proper cleanup in fall, I remove the old stocks. I attribute my unseasonal timing to the glories of teaching wonderful university students and grading their many papers. A great privilege, but …
Holy grief—is there such a thing? Or is all grief horrid, unholy, the pain we cannot welcome? Then again, is holy grief the only kind of grief, the right kind—the other kind of grief is . . . is what? Can someone tell me what unholy grief would be? I have my moments when the …
Growing up is really hard to do. And at different stages of our lives, we have a shortlist, maybe a longish shortlist, of what we “must have done,” we imagine, in order to qualify for having “grown up.” As life happens, we adjust the lists. Maybe the “fairy tale dream” gets shelved or just drops …
If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will most likely happen: this weird thing people call “bifocal vision.” When your vision starts going wonky so that your arm isn’t long enough to decipher what’s right in front of you, you need help: you need bifocal glasses. When it happened to me, it seemed to …
Every autumn some of us might wonder, “Just how did August become September?” Do you ever whisper to yourself, or want to shout, “I’m a summer child in a winter world!”? Probably all of us take stock of what happened over the summer when September arrives—favourite things we could do, good things not done, and …
These words by George MacDonald in the novel Phantastes always challenge me: “Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love” (ch. 10). Sorrows’ Doors—the portal to deepest …
“And they all lived happily ever after.” What were they thinking, these recorders and writers of fairy tales, like Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, to imprint such a message on our hearts and minds? And what are we thinking, to still thrill to hear it? Do we dream of being healthy, wealthy, beautiful/ handsome, and …
We all stand on the shoulders of those writers who’ve gone before us, and it’s best to know who these folks are, why they speak to us as powerfully as they do, and applaud them with gratitude and joy. I have many favourite writers and the list keeps growing, but if I had to choose …
Monika Hilder 