It’s darker longer, and we probably feel it more in the morning than in the afternoon. We will begin losing about two minutes a day in September as we move into fall. Among other things, it means feeding the neighborhood cats in the dark. They’re not really feral because they do want to be petted. It’s also quieter longer in the morning, which is nice.
The longer darker morning can give you more time to think, to reflect on what you read, whether in a book or on the internet. This morning’s Guardian, which discusses books each Sunday, has an interesting conversation between two novelists, one of whom, I’m ashamed to say, I never heard of.
Lea Ypi (a name you can pronounce if you can say anything in Finnish), an Albanian novelist, and Elif Shafak of Turkey weighed in on writing in an age of demagoguery, not to mention censorship, which tries to reduce the complexity in literature to the pious platitudes of politics reducing thought to the lowest common denominator. The whole point of literature is that it has a democratic function because it doesn’t preach. Its very ambiguity speaks to us on darker early mornings as we face the day to come.
Prayer for the Day
Life-changing God who walks with us before we call on you,
We seek to understand you and what you call us to do;
Bringing us into community, we listen for your voice
Which sometimes comes in surprising places.
Turn the water of or souls into the wine of your Spirit
So we serve you more fully and completely.
In the name of the One who served even to the end,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We are living in a very complex era. We have massive global challenges ahead of us, and everything from the climate crisis to the possibility of another pandemic to deepening and widening inequalities, shows how deeply interconnected we are.
Elif Shafak, Turkish novelist living in London
So how do you challenge that? [the official line of power] I think it’s only when literature becomes resistance that it can challenge that, but it needs to explicitly want to do that.
Lea Ypi, Albanian novelist living in London
Say among the nations, “The Lord is king!
The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
The Lord will judge the peoples with equity.”
Psalm 96: 10