Tea and Toast and Thyme

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

I was in an underground train, a crowded train in which all sorts of people jostled together, sitting and strap-hanging – workers of every description going home at the end of the day. Quite suddenly I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture, Christ in them all. But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one of them, living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them – but because He was in them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too, here in this underground train; not only the world as it was at that moment, not only all the people in all the countries of the world, but all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.

I came out into the street and walked for a long time in the crowds. It was the same here, on every side, in every passer-by, everywhere – Christ.

Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life. It is not the foolish sinner like myself, running about the world with reprobates and feeling magnanimous, who comes closest to them and brings them healing; it is the contemplative in her cell who has never set eyes on them, but in whom Christ fasts and prays for them— or it may be a charwoman in whom Christ makes Himself a servant again, or a king whose crown of gold hides a crown of thorns. Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness.

lucy? the strange girl without a certificate, without her fourth grade. traumatized from her past. and he chooses her, trusts her, helps build her up.

george? the odd researcher kicked out by fittes? lockwood says “you’re my best friend now come home with me”. he sees the brilliant mind behind the eccentricity, naked yoga, rude commentary.

holly? scared, verbally abused, grieving holly who lost her whole team and all of her confidence in herself? he chooses her, too. strengthens her confidence until she’s back to the agent she needs to be.

even kipps, his once rival. the guy he loved to hate, who stole his jobs and was insufferable about it. the soggy ginger plague rat. and lockwood says “come with us on this case”. gives kipps’ his ability back.

of course, what each of them do for him is equally as important (and it’s a whole other essay). and these characters’ arcs have so much to do with other people and their own choices, not just lockwood.

Autumn sun through my window

2. The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard

3. "Abolitionists turned the tables on Europeans by accusing them of being cannibals when they ate sugar tainted with the flesh and blood of slaves."

here's the intro

Just added embroidered bookmarks to my Etsy!!

I saw you looking at your reflection today.

You were tugging at the streaks in your hair like you do sometimes, twisting and pulling and trying to hide them, and you said something to Holly about dyeing them soon.

I know you don’t like them. They’re a constant reminder of the nightmare that was the Other Side.

But when I look at them… all I can feel is grateful. Grateful that no matter what happens, I got a glimpse of what you’ll look like when you live to grow old.

You know, perhaps better than anyone, what it means to be an agent. What it means to wonder if you’ll ever have a future. Believe it or not, I have hope for one… a future where there is tea and biscuits and decades of photographs on the walls and children’s drawings all over the Thinking Cloth and George over for dinner and your hand in mine.

But if we never get there, at least I have a piece of what it would be. At least I can enjoy how beautiful you look with white at your temples. How perfect you are. And sometimes, when we sit by the fire and I’m almost asleep, it feels like maybe we really did reach that future. Without ghosts, or fear, or doubt. A future where the one thing we know, the truest thing in the world, is that I…