Dear Friend,

The things in this Midweek Musings all ask a version of the question: what are the little things that make us who we are. Not the big things (the grief, the worry, the traumas, the celebrations), those tend to make themselves known. I mean the smaller things—the particular piece of music that undoes you every time you hear it; the question that motivates your life even if you’re not fully aware of it; the creature that takes up residence in your brain when you’re in a room full of people and you’re not sure you belong.

We’re all such complex puzzles—some of the pieces are big and we know the shape of them, while others are small and go unnoticed, even by ourselves. What would it be like if we could see each other more clearly? Not the performance, but the actual inventory — the strange and ungainly and beautiful things that make us who we are?

With blessings,
Pastor Sarah

What Was Your First Question?

by Courtney Martin

At 8 years old, Dorothy Day watched strangers care for one another in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and asked, why can’t we always treat one another that way? That question sparks this essay, which asks, what question did you ask as a child that has continued to motivate your life, even if in unsuspecting ways:

“In some ways, these questions are so powerful because they are asked from such a pure place. Children are famously intuitive about underlying dynamics that adults assume they couldn’t possibly understand. They focus in on unspoken truths like homing pigeons and then have the audacity to speak them; the world hasn’t yet acculturated them to fearing the sound of a silence breaking. They are not, in the best of all possible ways, team players. They are inexhaustible witnesses and truth seekers.”

Read the full article here.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor

Lady Gaga

Yes, it was technically a Super Bowl commercial. No, that doesn’t make it less moving. Just voice and piano, and a song that turns out to have resonance far beyond its original context.

Nobody is Normal

Childline | Catherine Prowse

This is a stop-motion animated short made for Childline, a UK children’s helpline, and it is genuinely delightful. It imagines all the strange and ungainly things we carry around inside us—the feelings too big or weird or embarrassing to show anyone—and makes the case, visually and simply, that everyone is doing exactly the same thing. Nobody is as put-together as they look. Nobody is as alone in their weirdness as they feel.

The Best Poem Ever