Lift Up Your Hearts!

Here's a very short Facebook reel that I have found worthwhile and encouraging. Some of you may pass it by simply because it is Glenn Beck speaking, and I'd be in sympathy with that reaction. There are some people—he's not one, but there certainly are some people—with whom I have a hard time following my own motto, "The wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies." If you feel that way about Glenn Beck, don't torture yourself.

But I appreciate hearing wisdom and truth spoken calmly, clearly, and succinctly, facing reality without anger and without fear. I share it for those of my readers who may find it inspiring.

Spoken by Faramir, in The Two Towers.

This may be the most inspirational pig story since Charlotte's Web.

I've recently discovered Mollie Engelhart, who is both a regenerative farmer, à la my hero Joel Salatin, and an excellent writer. Also more:

Mollie Engelhart, regenerative farmer and rancher at Sovereignty Ranch, is committed to food sovereignty, soil regeneration, and educating on homesteading and self-sufficiency. She is the author of “Debunked by Nature”: Debunk Everything You Thought You Knew About Food, Farming, and Freedom—a raw, riveting account of her journey from vegan chef and LA restaurateur to hands-in-the-dirt farmer, and how nature shattered her cultural programming.

The title of Engelhart's article this morning is "The Pig Who Refused to Be Bacon." Good enough, but I think I would have called it "The Pig Who Lived." 

Brave Hart stands as a reminder that will matters. That spirit matters. That individual actions can shift outcomes in ways we cannot predict.... And every time I see her, mud on her sides, babies tucked against her belly, I’m reminded: The fight you think you’ve lost may be the one that changes everything.

It is Epiphany.  The Twelve Days of the Christmas Season are ended. And yet I will honor their departure with one more Christmas post.

I hope you enjoy this setting of the poem "Noël,"  written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1936, rediscovered in 2013, and revealed to me by a fellow lover of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

It's Christmas Eve, and I have many things to say but no time to write. Instead, I offer this beautiful King's College Choir rendition of O Come, All Ye Faithful, with its glorious descant, and on the last verse the magnificent Willcocks chord on "Word."

You're welcome! Have a

Very Merry Christmas!

“Afraid of heights?” Helmer asked. “Perfect. You really are a mixed-up lad. You come here full of defiance and anger, and then you show up and you’re a horrible, hobbled mess. You spend a week with me, and now you’re such an efficient student it’s scaring me and I begin to think you might someday be some kind of decent soldier. And now this."

“I’m willing to work and overcome anything, sir. Including this,” Picket choked out.

“Don’t worry,” Helmer said. “It’s just another enemy to be taken down in the end.”

From S. D. Smith's The Green Ember.

Forevergreen is a new, short, animated film.  I know nothing about it except that a friend recommended it, and I found it enjoyable and moving.  I belive this preview (of the entire film) will only be available for free for a week, so if you're interested, watch it soon.  It's 13 minutes long.

Working my way through my father's vast collection of writings, I occasionally find a gem I wish to share.

(Okay, so "vast" is a relative adjective, and perhaps an exaggeration—it's not as if I'm working through the letters of C. S. Lewis or something—but in personal terms it's accurate.)

This came from Dad's 1987 journal documenting his Elderhostel experience at Ferrum College, in Ferrum, Virginia. The program is now called Road Scholar, and no longer has the age restriction, but at that time it was primarily for those over 65, that being the age at which most people retired and could go on such adventures.

Also at the college were a group of gifted 6th graders from nearby Martinsville. They also were at the ice cream social and were told by their teachers to mix with the old folks, so it turned out to be a pleasant evening. I think the future governor of Virginia may have been amongst them. One of the women asked the boy about what they were doing, and then said, "I'll bet you didn't expect to see so many old folks here."

He replied, "I don't know, I haven't seen any yet."

Smart and wise.  I could envision voting for him.

On this 610th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, it's time to reprise (again) Kenneth Branagh's version of Henry V's famous speech.  (Shakespeare's version, that is.)

I see a lot of people—not only in America but from around the world—saying, or displaying on t-shirts, or social media posts, and the like, "I am Charlie Kirk." I have absolutely no problem with that and appreciate the impulse.

I do wonder what the French are thinking, since theirs was the first "Je suis Charlie"; it's hard to believe that was ten years ago.

Although I understand the sentiment, I can't at the moment bring myself to join in. It feels far too audacious, like saying, "I am Mother Teresa." The more I see of Charlie Kirk in action, the more I know that I will never be as energetic, motivated, intelligent, knowledgeable, patient, calm under pressure, forgiving, nor as loving of my opponents as he was.

I am not Charlie Kirk.

But watching him does make me want to be a better me.

I hate click-bait titles. Especially those of the "X humiliates Y" sort, most of which turn out to be inaccurate. I wish more people had this attitude, expressed in George MacDonald's Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood.

When I am successful, in any argument, my one dread is of humiliating my opponent. Indeed I cannot bear it. It humiliates me. And if you want him to think about anything, you must leave him room, and not give him such associations with the question that the very idea of it will be painful and irritating to him. Let him have a hand in the convincing of himself.

This rare understanding is what I've seen constantly as I look into the phenomenon of Charlie Kirk. It's a big reason why his death is such a loss to our country and the world. May all of us who are seeking to learn from him take this to heart.

Watt's Law for Relationships: Power equals Strength times Humility.

Although I read all of the original Harry Potter books when they first came out, I saw only a few of the films. Thanks to a friend's gift, however, we've recently been watching the early ones, and I was able to enjoy them thoroughly because it's been so long since I read the books that I can't whine about the differences.

A few days ago we viewed Goblet of Fire for the first time. You can imagine the powerful impact of the following scene. I knew I had to find it online and share it here.

I didn't play a lot with dolls as a child, nor with trucks either. I had both, and enjoyed both, along with sundry other toys: blocks, Tinker Toys, laboratory equipment, tools, toy guns, childhood games, stuffed animals, a (real) bow and arrow set, a hula hoop, a baton for twirling—normal childhood stuff. I was eclectic in my tastes with no overwhelming preference for anything, except I suppose for reading books, climbing trees, and exploring in the woods. So, as I said, I didn't play much with dolls.  But the dolls I did have were babies or young children, and they were simple, the better to encourage imaginative play.

So my heart skipped a beat when I saw what one Australian mother has done to "rescue" old, worn-out dolls of the more recent type. I never liked Barbie dolls, certainly not the Bratz and other strange-looking creatures that passed for dolls when our daughters were young. This woman brings beauty from ashes.

This seven-minute video will warm your heart. Not only watching twisted ugliness turned normal, but especially listening to little girls with much more heart and common sense than the jaded, angry toy manufacturers.

This is another post I've pulled up from my long backlog. I wrote it in 2015, when the story was new, but for some reason it languished for more than 10 years! I don't know why; the post was complete and I still love the story.

The inevitable question is, "Where are they now?" What has happened since that bright beginning? Tree Change Dolls has an Etsy site, which appears to concentrate on helping others revive their own dolls, but occasionally offers some of her own creations, which she announces on her Facebook site.

As with any good thing, there are detractors, such as the doll collectors who think she is ruining the dolls, some of which are collectable and worth money in their original form. (Though probably not when found worn-out and broken.) More disturbing are those who say they hate the Tree-Change dolls because they promote the idea of natural beauty instead of heavily made-up and sexualized children's dolls. (That's the impression I got; I didn't spend much time in that unhappy land to find out more.)

"Where does the name come from?" is the other question that intrigued me. Google Search brought up this AI answer:

A tree change is a move from an urban or city environment to a more peaceful, nature-focused rural or regional area, often inland, to embrace a simpler and healthier lifestyle. Unlike a sea change, which involves moving to a coastal area, a tree change focuses on reconnecting with the natural landscape, such as rolling hills, mountains, or countryside, to escape the pressures and fast pace of city living. 

Well, that fits, but it struck a discordant note for me because that's not what "sea change" means. Here's the interesting story of the term, from Merriam-Webster:

In The Tempest, William Shakespeare’s final play, sea change refers to a change brought about by the sea: the sprite Ariel, who aims to make Ferdinand believe that his father the king has perished in a shipwreck, sings within earshot of the prince, “Full fathom five thy father lies...; / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / into something rich and strange.” This is the original, now-archaic meaning of sea change. Today the term is used for a distinctive change or transformation. Long after sea change gained this figurative meaning, however, writers continued to allude to Shakespeare’s literal one; Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, and P.G. Wodehouse all used the term as an object of the verb suffer, but now a sea change is just as likely to be undergone or experienced.

So, a sea change is a transformation, but not specifically moving to the seaside to escape city life. However, "sea change" and "tree change" are apparently used in that way in Australia (at least on the one real estate site I checked), so the name of these dolls that have moved to a simpler, happier life makes perfect sense.

This excerpt from Village Diary by Miss Read (Dora Jessie Saint) captures both my frustration with the disservice our educational system does to bright children, and my nostalgia for conversations that can be both contentious and contented.  The speaker is a schoolmistress in a small, rural English village. The book was published in 1957, and the author was herself a teacher.

[We had] a most agreeable and stimulating argument about children's reading. Mr. Arnold ... maintained that children are not ready to read before the age of six, or even seven; and that all sorts of nervous tensions and eyestrain can be set up by too much emphasis on early reading.

I maintain that each child should go at its own rate, and that the modern tendency is to go at the rate of the slowest member of a reading group, and that this is wrong. There are, to my mind, far more bright children being bored and very frustrated because they are not getting on fast enough with their reading, than there are slow ones who are being harmed by too-rapid progress. I have known several children—I was one myself—who could read enough simply-written stories to amuse themselves at the age of four and a half to five. We were not forced, but it was just one of those things we could do easily, and the advantages were enormous.

In the first place we could amuse ourselves, and reading also gave us a quiet and relaxed time for recovering from the violent activity which is the usual five-year-old's way of passing the time. ... Secondly, the amount of general knowledge we unconsciously imbibed, stood us in good stead in later years. ... Even more important, the early poems and rhymes, read and learnt so easily at this stage, have been a constant and abiding joy. ...Thirdly, the wealth of literature written and presented expressly for the four to six age-group—the Beatrix Potter books are the first that spring to mind—can be used, loved and treasured to such an extent that is not possible to a late reader.

The battle raged with great zest. ... Mr. Arnold twinkled, and said I was a renegade, but that he must admit that he had seen no cases of nervous disorders in my school. And after school [we] enjoyed a cup of tea in my garden, among the apple blossom, with the greatest goodwill, each knowing that he would never convert the other, but content to let it be so.