June, she’ll change her tune

by chuckofish

Well, here we are–a new month and the year almost half over! It is also the start of the festivities celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee.

We wish her well. Here are some thoughts on a long monarchy and what comes next for the church. “Queen Elizabeth is a devout Christian and has increasingly made this clear through her annual Christmas broadcasts. At the same time, she is the representative of a sort of national folk-Christianity; a symbol of a time when Britain was a Christian nation. As such, she has allowed us to fool ourselves that things are not as bad as they could be. The nation still has a Christian heart.”

And, boy, this rings true:

“Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”
― C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns

Do you think he was talking about us?

Anyway, it is feeling decidedly like summer around here. Here’s a summery snapshot of my grandmother (Catherine) and her beau/future husband (Bunker Cameron) circa 1919 with some great-aunt in between.

Bunker is, of course, goofing around wearing someone else’s hat. Catherine thinks it’s hilarious. Who knows what the old lady thinks–but she was probably amused by Bunker too.

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed–
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you–
It takes life to love Life.

–Edgar Lee Master, “Lucinda Matlock–Spoon River Anthology”