Nine accidental Thanksgiving dinners; Shout to the Lord turns 30; Find someone who loves you like MPs love MAiD
3 Things this week and the poem "Kneaded"
I thought the 400 lights I risked my life to wrap in the tree would be more spectacular. But something is better than nothing, right?
The snow has finally fallen in south western Ontario and our lights appeared at just the right time. I hope your getting into the Christmas spirit!
Thanks for spending some of your weekend with Things I Wrote Down. Here are three things and an a poem.
1. Nine accidental Thanksgiving dinners
I love this story. She texted a wrong number and the rest is history.
Almost a decade ago, Wanda Dench who is now 67, sent a dinner invite to Jamal Hinton, now 25. She thought she was sending a note to her grandson. But when he showed up at her door for Thanksgiving dinner, she didn’t turn him away.
Ever since, they’ve done Thanksgiving together, and the world has loved it. But this year, their ninth consecutive accidental dinner was disrupted by her cancer diagnosis. They connected over Instagram as she recovered from chemo.
What a wholesome story! The film writes itself.
Studies reveal that people who give books written by indie authors are loved by said indie authors. Buy one of my books on Amazon.
2. Shout to the Lord turns 30
Her song turns 30 this year. Darlene Zschech, the Australian whose last name you can’t properly pronounce, wrote Shout to the Lord spontaneously three decades ago. She sat down with Rita Springer to talk about being a woman leading people around the world in worship.
The two women have a fascinating discussion about celebrity culture and what that means for leaders of sacred music who have such access to fast fame, fast money and whose songs can quickly go far on platforms.
I stumbled upon the interview as I was scouring YouTube and got pulled in. I didn’t know much about the personal life or story of Darlene Zschech and what I learned was really moving.
Find someone who loves you like MPs love MAiD
They did it. Despite the warnings. Despite the fact that dozens upon dozens of disability groups begged them not to. Despite the slippery slope countries like Canada have careened from. British MPs voted to move the UK to assisted suicide.
And now it's: “Long live the King, unless…”
The BBC had extensive, in-depth coverage from lots of angles. If you want to track its progress or get an overview, this a good place to start.
Why do British-styled democracies love MAiD so much?
A poem
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
The famously misattributed quote (often attributed to Mark Twain) was, turns out, from philosopher Blaise Pascal.
Sometimes the shortest poems say the most.
Here’s “Kneaded.”
