Plot Points #3 💌
Ordinary days, in memoriam, and a prayer for you
Hello! 🌸 School is officially out and the kiddos are home (for the moment) and I plan on making regular use of our neighborhood pool this summer. We’re still not used to such luxuries—and often forget the pool even exists—so I think it’s high time we take advantage of it. Theo remains suspicious of most bodies of water, except the creek behind the house, but I’m hoping to teach him how to swim this year. Or, at the very least, how to not hang like a sloth onto my body whenever we approach a pool.
It’s good to have goals.
Artist Credit: Julianna Bíbor
If you haven’t already, mark your calendar for next Thursday, June 1st because that’s the official start to our summer book club! Once again, our June read will be Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and every subscriber can participate! Simply download the Substack app, introduce yourself in the group chat, and grab a copy of the book at your local bookstore or library.
I’ll be posting my thoughts each week in accordance with the following reading plan, but feel free to read at whatever pace is comfortable for you.
Chapters 1-12: Week of June 2-9
Chapters 13-24: Week of June 12-16
Chapters 25-35: Week of June 19-23
Chapters 35-45: Week of June 26-30
Okay, that’s it for updates! Now, grab your coffee and let’s get to the point(s).
Point #1: A pretty good life is a good enough life.
A sweet reminder for the writers—and ambitious people of all types—among us: “What if we never sell a million books or make a ton of money, and this is our life? Just this everyday sort of life?”
Point #2: Our kids deserves parents who will say no, and mean it.
Sometimes I wonder how many memoirs we’re gonna see in thirty years from kids who are currently facing untold effects of childhoods lived primarily in virtual worlds. Let’s give them better.
Point #3: Twenty years goes by in a blink.
This week marked two decades since I graduated high school on May 23, 2003, a fact upon which my husband remarked, “More time has passed since then than years you’d been alive at that point.” To which I say, “Yes, and having an existential crisis is my Millennial heritage, thankyouverymuch.”
Point #4: “He offered a radically different way.”
A beautiful tribute to pastor and theologian, Tim Keller, who passed away one week ago at the age of 72.
Bonus Point: “The longer I look, the more I see that every place and song is makeshift, that everyone who loves is just trying.”
This piece asks the same question my mother and I discussed last weekend while attending a festival at the local Greek Orthodox Church:
Does it matter if churches are beautiful?
A prayer for your weekend
Father, may the worries of my week fall to rest in Your hands.
Give me courage enough to let them.
Amen
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