I’m not completely sure what this post has to do with happiness or intentionality, except that unexpected connections can be a source of pleasure. So this shot was taken on our hike last week, the one that was supposed to have us end up at Blue Lake but which ended considerably before that because there was so much snow still on the trail.
As I took a look backward and snapped this picture suddenly the words “a worn path” popped into my head. And I remembered the short story with that title by the Southern writer Eudora Welty, about an old black woman who goes into town to get medicine for her grandson and who meets with various obstacles along the way. Nothing very dramatic happens, although she does meet up with a hunter who points a gun at her and also falls into a ditch. Instead, we gradually find out about her situation and her character. Her grandson swallowed lye three years before, and whatever it is she’s getting for him is “soothing medicine.” We know that the story isn’t too long after the Civil War, as she says, “I never did go to school, I was too old at the Surrender.” And we know that she and her grandson are alone in the world. At the end of the story she has made it to Natchez, gotten the medicine, and is heading back home. And that’s it. (If you’d like to read the whole story, you can access it through the wonderful University of Virginia website that has digitized many works. If you’d like to get a more comic side of Welty, you can read “Why I Live at the P. O.” According to good old Wikipedia, Welty was also a photographer, and this story was inspired by a picture she took of a woman ironing in the back room of a small Southern post office.)
The Year of Living Biblically
In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love by Joseph Luzzi, HarperCollins, 2015.
I wrote last week about John Piper’s book 
Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, rev. ed., by John Piper, Multnomah Press, 2011. Available in other formats and earlier editions.
Cheating Destiny: Living with Diabetes, America’s Biggest Epidemic by James S. Hirsch, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence by Gavin de Becker, Dell Trade Paperback, 1999, also available in other formats. I’m not sure why I was reminded of this book and put it on hold at the library. I had read it before and remembered portions of it quite well, but it was well worth re-reading. De Becker runs a security firm, providing services and counseling to people who feel and/or indeed are under threat. He himself grew up in an extremely violent home, but instead of becoming violent himself he decided to help reduce violence by giving people the tools they need to protect themselves.
When People are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man by Edward T. Welch, P & R Publishing, 1997. Published in cooperation with The Christian Counseling and Education Foundation.
Just finished a fascinating book mostly about food and our relationship to it. Frank Bruni, who was the restaurant critic for the New York Times from 2004-2009, spent most of his life battling his weight. He grew up in an Italian-American family that put great emphasis on having mounds of food available at any and all times. If there wasn’t enough food on the table to make it sag, then there wasn’t enough. As Bruni moved into young adulthood he tried amphetamines, forced vomiting, and other extremely unhealthy measures to control his weight. After college he became a journalist, and at one point he was following George W. Bush on his campaign trail. He calculated that there were eight meals served daily to the press corps in an effort to keep them (literally) fat and happy so that they’d report positively on the candidate.