The Holiness of Small Things

The dog days of summer are here in Little Rock again. It's August 10. I open the door of my house and walk out into another interminable, sultry, humid Southern day. I trudge down the street to the northern path that is so familiar to me after three years of living in the neighborhood. On the left and right I hear the familiar sounds of early morning--the katydids, crickets, and tree frogs still serenading in the foot-high weeds along the easements, and in addition I hear the cars and trucks roar by toward work. From the sound of the souped-up engines, I imagine that teenagers throughout the neighborhood are buzzing quickly to their fast food or lawn mowing jobs. The schools are set to re-open in another week.

The announcer on my favorite NPR station indicates it is seventy-nine degrees and is talking about the survival of journalism. Simply stated, journalism as a career must move beyond simply saving money and cutting costs but must, of necessary, reinvent itself in order to survive. An English crime novelist had just been interviewed in a previous story who spoke of going down to the Thames only to see the ugly side by side with the beautiful--a drowned bloated carcass of a dog to the left and a graceful white heron to the right.

As I get to the halfway point of my morning walk, I turn and head back for another mile and one-half to my house. It is here that my face feels a gently blowing breeze coming from the South. I look up at the horizon to see a two-thirds waning moon in the light of the morning, slowing sinking out of sight to the West. I remember a line I have just read from yet another of Jan Karon's books in her Mitford series, A New Song, "the ineffable holiness of small things." At my age, I do not long for the things of the past--a newer car, a bigger house, a remodeled kitchen, and so on. I simply want to enjoy the little blessings of life daily, juxtaposing the annoyances of hot weather with the knowledge that cool breezes will blow again in another month or so.