So profound was Anna and Robert's wedding that I can't stop pondering its potent magic.

The families supporting and standing behind Robert and Anna are a fortress of fidelity. Three sets of grandparents sojourned to our beautiful Shire to witness the vows. I'm guessing around 150 years of marital faithfulness are represented in their marriages. Winsome, dignified, charming. These gentle folk are who I want to be when I grow up. Their flame is still burning, their love abides, they joyfully treasure each other in the sunset years. Clearly, their children and grandchildren adore them, rendering preference and respect. It was a comfort to move among these well-oiled relationships.

Also behind the bride and groom are delighted parents, grateful to be in this moment, so proud of their child and so pleased with his/her choice. Parents who have worked diligently to arrive at this junction, who rejoice to see maturity and beauty in their children.

Beside Robert and Anna are ten siblings (plus four added by marriage). Their devotion is palpable. Their toasts were deep with emotion involving some long, very throat-lumpish pauses. There's a shadow of grief—the tiny sorrow of separation and change—the kind of shadow that with its shades highlights the bright joy. You see, these dear ones are cherished and respected. And yet, there was no sense of you-aren't-good-enough-for-my-sister (daughter, brother, son). 

Robert and Anna are both glorious; a glory that comes from all directions: inward, upward, downward, outward.   

     Photo credit: Rebecca James

Each family's culture was represented. Many of the Taylor clan wore salwar kurtas to the rehearsal to reflect their Indian heritage. The Hurley appreciation of excellent music was evident with Uncle John and Aunt Rebecca's violin contributions to the music and in the congregational hymn We Are God's People, the processional in other Hurley weddings. The Callihan rehearsal dinner had cowboy boots as centerpieces and barbed wire on the serving table. Callihans enjoy dramatic productions: the guys wrote and produced a skit for the evening's entertainment.

It is deliciously simple and profoundly mysterious, this love between Robert and Anna. Grounded in faith, expressed in humility, bounded by restraint, Christ-centered, other-oriented, staggering in its beauty, strong as death. They are not perfect, but there is an excellence in their love that called for a robust celebration: navy dresses with daffodil yellow shoes, bold bright flowers, Anna's entrance to For All the Saints, a homily focused on dancing together, a feast of home-made pies, a Father-Daughter led Grand March, Robert and Anna's first dance to Eric Bibb's Gratitude, and their departure as we sang the Lutkin Benediction. It was good. It was fitting. It was full of glory.

As Robert and Anna danced the next generation looked on, hopes and dreams germinating.

My account of Robert's sister's wedding

Robert's dad, Wes Callihan, on this wedding

Heavenly Father,

There are bleak moments in our life when it feels as if the world has pitted itself against us. We grow unthankful and our hearts lose hope. It's usually at these times our mothers give us breakfast and tell us to snap out of it, and we are forced to rejoice at how good we have it.

Father, we can't thank You enough for the impact and example our mothers have had on us over the years. Their industry, faithfulness, love, discipline, and unworldly care should give us pause to consider there's more to the story than meets the eye. You have a majestic plan, and in this plan is redemption, and at the forefront of this battle are our mothers.

We can't pray enough, Father, for protection of our mothers in their role as helpmate and guide. Give them patience and grace in what sometimes may feel like combat in raising their young ones.

Bless the work of their hands in their homes and bring prosperity upon their many endeavors. We as sons, daughters and fathers are forever indebted for Your design of the family and how it beautifully reflects Your kingdom and character.

Bless our mothers who give of themselves completely and selflessly. May we honor them with our love and respect. "Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates."

In Christ's name,

Amen.

* In our church we regularly pray for our families and for the nations of the earth. Yesterday Brian, a young dad himself, prayed this prayer for mothers. He gave me permission to share it with you.

Before we drift to sleep, I read aloud (sometimes just a paragraph, other times a page or two) from Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage; we wake up to The Last Battle (snicker about that combination).

When I drive the car, I listen to Kathleen Norris' Acedia & Me. Acedia means lack of caring...sort of like depression, but different.

If I have an afternoon with my eight year old grandson, our real aloud is Where the Red Fern Grows. We are at the happy parts of a compelling story; Gavin begs for one more chapter.

I'm plowing through Colin Thubron's book Shadow of the Silk Road, a travel memoir. I believe this is the loveliest book cover...ever! So much terrain is unfamiliar; it takes longer to assimilate this reading. I had read the first two chapters a while back and put it down. When I retunred to it a few months later I had to start at the beginning. With forty pages to finish, I've read Thubron through China, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and we're entering Turkey.

Donna at Quiet Life started a book club reading Bonhoeffer. I listened to it in 2012, and immediately bought the print copy because I wanted to read it with my eyes. What a remarkable family! What a rare jewel of a man!

Cindy at Ordo Amoris started a book club reading Hidden Art , in honor of the late Edith Schaeffer. I just located my copy and am happy to be re-reading this gem.

So you could say I'm filling my mind with art, Asia, apes, apathy, Achtung!, amicability, and adventure. 

Bruce Marshall's author blurb on the back cover:

Bruce Marshall is a dark, smiling man, fundamentally serious, four-square in appearance, definite in manner. He has a great fund of pity for humble, toiling people whose virtues are seldom proclaimed, a vigorous and delightfully malicious humor, and a savage dislike of bullies, stuffed shirts, humbugs and toadies.

Many of my favorite stories involve priests: G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown; dear Mr. Harding in Anthony Trollope's The Warden; Father Tim in the Mitford books and Father Tim novels; Brother Cadfael in Ellis Peter's medieval mysteries; the priest in Jon Hassler's Dear James.

Father Smith is a Catholic priest in Presbyterian Scotland, a priest who prays daily for Scotland's conversion. I don't think I've ever read a novel with such a strong emphasis on Catholic theology, and, at first, I found it off-putting. But I discovered that I appreciated many of this humble man's thoughts. I think any conservative would appreciate the struggle to hold on to the old ways.

When he had been a boy himself, Father Smith had longed to be grown up, because he had believed that it would be easier to obey our Lord as an adult than as a child, and he had been disappointed when he had found it was more difficult.  

When he was happy, Father Smith always sang snatches from the psalms as he walked the street.

Always remember that you can't see into other people's souls, but you can see into your own, and so far as you really know there is nobody alive more wicked and ungrateful to Almighty God than yourself.

Father Smith felt that it was a pity that one ever heard anything at all on wireless sets, because it seemed to him that new inventions were coming out much too quickly, and that if amusements went on becoming more and more mechanized as they seemed to be doing, people would no longer require to use their intelligence to fill their leisure, and literature, poetry, and the drama would be pop goes the weasel per omnia saecula saeculorum...

...and those who weren't weeping had a great distress on their faces because they knew that a great clumsy slice of man who had known all about God's mercy would walk among them no more.

The book opens at the start of the twentieth century with the priests wondering how to respond to the first cinema in town. Father Smith baptizes two babies, whose lives we follow throughout the story. When the Great War begins, Father Smith works on the front line as a chaplain, hearing confessions and praying over the dead. His bishop predicts a spiritual revival will come out of the war, but Father Smith finds reality to be much different. What held my attention was Father Smith's grappling with the tension from the static doctrines of the church and the rapidly changing culture.

I learned a host of Catholic nomenclature: sedilia (stone seats for the clergy), asperges (the rite of sprinkling Holy water), pyx (the container that holds consecrated bread), and pro-Cathedral (parish church temporarily serving as cathedral). 

I wish I could remember who recommended this. I found it absorbing reading, but I have no desire to read it again. The cheerful humility makes me want to explore another book by Bruce Marshall.

I love 5MinutesforBooks.com's feature What's on Your Nightstand? It's fun to get a snapshot of what people are reading. Clearly, I did not tidy up my stack of books on the nightstand. I can't go into much detail, because of time constraints, but here is the stack I am working through. I ran out of my favorite Post-It Flags, as you can see by the pencils stuck in the books. Shame.

• Real Marriage, by Mark and Grace Driscoll is on loan from my son and his wife. I want to read parts of it aloud with my husband...someday!

• Barely visible, the tiny sliver of blue, is Fit to Burst by Rachel Jankovic. This young mom has an abundance of wisdom that reaches far beyond homemade granola bar recipes and stars on chore charts. I like to consume it in small bites.

• The back cover showing, Shadow of the Silk Road, by Colin Thubron, is my current travel book. In this book Thubron travels from Xian, west of Shanghai, to Antioch in modern day Turkey. This is my third Thubron; I'm already inclined to like his writing. But I'm not sure he'll be able to entrance me like Rob Gifford did in China Road.

• The generic black journal is my commonplace book. This is my fourth identical journal, purchased at WalMart, in which I write down quotes, phrases, words, book and DVD titles, and similar musings.

• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, a Flavia de Luce mystery by Alan Bradley, has been borrowed for far too long. I listened to the highly excellent audio version, but wanted to copy quotes from it. Which involves a re-reading with some skimming. So this title is the most guilt-inspiring one.

• Black bound Kindle rests on Flavia. I read the sample portion of Booked, Literature in the Soul of Me, by Karen Swallow Prior. An email reminded me that I had an unused gift card from Amazon, so I purchased the book today. Although I keep acquiring Kindle books, I haven't read much except the Bible on it in February.

• The orange spine of Scrolling Forward, Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, by David Levy, is a book that simultaneously provokes groans and stubbornness in me. I was "Currently Reading" this on Goodreads on September 9th! The author, after finishing a Ph.D. in computer science, majoring in Artificial Intelligence, moved to London to study calligraphy for two years. That alone makes me like him. And the dedication in Hebrew. But, this book from 2001 is outdated. And for some reason I can't ditch it. My persistence—foolish or not—was rewarded in chapter 10 with a great story about the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and the author's assignment for a Hebrew class to translate Psalm 104:5. I have twenty pages left and I'm determined to finish. But the joy left a while back.

• Top of the pile is This Rich and Wondrous Earth, a Memoir of Sakeji School,  by Linda Moran Burklin. I've read Wes Stafford's book Too Small to Ignore and several magazine articles revealing abuse and mistreatment at African boarding schools for missionary kids. This book is not about that. Linda's book has a good-natured humor that acknowledges the hardships and difficulties, but also points out the benefits she received and the fun she experienced. I have to admit that the tight regimen and censored letters home has reminded me of prison. Last night we read a few pages aloud after dinner about a baptism that had us all laughing. It sounds sacrilegious, but it truly was a funny baptism story. I know of an MK who found Linda's book very therapeutic. I'm eager to finish it and pass it on to my cousin who was at a different African boarding school.

• There is a secondary pile behind the towering one with two books: Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog and John Stott's The Birds Our Teachers. You might call this the "Meaning To Get To" Pile.

 You are welcome to join the crew over at 5MfB or just write in the comments. What are you reading?