Saturday, September 7, 2013

However bad it looks...

I love this picture. It's actually a perfectly normal scene, but the angle of the houses in silhouette against that stormy sky makes it look vaguely threatening, in a cartoonish sort of way; like a world gone all topsy-turvy. (And isn't that a great word, topsy-turvy? Do people even say that any more?)

But I digress.  The truth is -- no matter what it looks like, this world is actually just fine: it's not going to hell in a handbasket (now there's another odd little phrase...)  And the reason I know that's true is I've just finished How the Light Gets In, the latest Inspector Gamache mystery by Louise Penny, and after a couple of days of extreme tension and anxiety ... well, I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone.

But when I grow up (if I ever do) I want to write things that help people understand there really is hope for this tangled tired old world of ours.  Because, however scared and anxious I get sometimes (and I do) some part of me always returns eventually to that root understanding -- with Julian of Norwich -- that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

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