There is one thing much more necessary

“But in the meantime you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while.  We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be.  But there is one thing much more necessary.”

“What is that, Grandmother?”

“To understand other people.”

“Yes, Grandmother.  I must be fair—for if I’m not fair to other people, I’m not worth being understood myself.  I see.  So as Curdie can’t help it, I will not be vexed with him, but just wait.”

The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald

---

She loves him.  He loves her.
She doesn’t even tell him. 
Because she has a chance.  She has a scholarship.
And because her religious, philandering father will kill her.

Appointment set.  Choice made.
The best choice she knows how to make.
She knows this is her baby.  But how else can she escape?
She knows poverty.  Hungry children.  Forgotten women.

Her sister sees the card.
Sickening fear and disbelief engulf her.
Can this be stopped?
Who to tell?
Her teacher, that compassionate man.

He helps her find others who care, who understand.
He helps her confront.
Talking, crying, embracing, praying.


She considers a new choice.
A choice to lose—
Scholarship.
Picture perfect wedding.
Freedom.
Control.

She may never escape.
Her child in poverty, hungry.
Herself, a forgotten woman.

But, upheld in the arms of these new friends,
She risks.
She abandons herself to hope.

In Defense of Children at Weddings

More than a third of the crowd is under fifteen.  Babies, toddlers, usually squirmy little boys in suit jackets two sizes too big, satin and lace wrapped pre-teens, all remarkably solemn and still.  Silence, waiting as bride and groom, parents, and witnesses sign their names and swear their oaths in the civil ceremony.  

Now, as the religious ceremony unfolds, every young gaze is intensely focused on the pageantry—the veil, the coins, the ring, the vows, the knot. 

My sons, sitting in the back row, sneak across the grass to the end of the make-shift aisle. The pronouncement.  The kiss.  Lane hurries back to me with a look of awe and wonder on his face and hugs me fiercely.

As the couple recesses the crowd gets to its feet, but the children—the children do much more. They rush, they push, they burst forth!  The boys—many unknown to each other—tumble into a pile of joyful, crazed, violent wrestling. They yell; they tear off their jackets and ties; they conquer.  The girls mob the bride, before any sense of a receiving line can be formed.  They squeal; they touch her face, her veil, her dress; they unite themselves with her beauty. 

Without understanding, they know.

“And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still.” –C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe