George MacDonald

I was handed a copy of Christian History & Biography today (Issue 86, Spring 2005) that focuses on George MacDonald (Scottish pastor, poet, writer). He's one of my favorites (except that his novels can be a bit tedious). We read The Golden Key to Riley and Logan (at 6 and 4) and they love it nearly as much as I love reading it to them (Jeff & I fought over who got to read each section...)

He has a great essay on imagination that I need to get a copy of and reread. I'm sure there's an easy way to do that online if I had a mind to look around.

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Now that I pulled my Hopkins off the shelf (for the sake of naming this blog) I'm enjoying reading through a few of his poems. I love his words. "Pied Beauty" is always a joy to read aloud. Sometimes I read poems like this to the kids because I want them to hear the beauty of well-chosen words. One night I sat on Logan's bed and read them a bunch of my poetry. It was interesting to hear their reactions.

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Lani put me onto this article that is stirring people up. It's on Boundless.org (part of Focus on the Family) and is abound what happens if you put off getting married. In discussing this with Riley (I gave her a quick summary fit for her six-year old mind) she replied, "well, if you didn't have a family you'd just be bored!" I'm not sure it's quite that simple, but it's as good a point as any.

Crittendon, author of What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman and this article "The Cost of Delaying Marriage", doesn't write from a hopeful or God-glorifying perspective. If anything, her view is reactionary and pragmatic. However, however, there were smatterings of truth. We have been told we can have it all - and we really can't have it all. There is a cost to living a self-obsessed life (whether married or single) but the answer is not to jump into marriage earlier, the answer is the gospel of Christ and his life-changing hope-bringing reality that turns a person from self-obsessed to passionate for God and his glory regardless of being married/unmarried.