Last night I slept over at the house of the sibs who teach me about tension management. The little ones were nestled all snug and we sat on the floor and looked at a children’s atlas, complete with the little drawings of corn or sardines or hockey players which tell one what is produced or played where. We munched popcorn and talked about where we each would like to go if we had the opportunity just now. We conversed some more and they went to bed.
I stayed up and watched Anne of Avonlea…

…not all it, mind you, but more than I had anticipated. Truth be told, I watched all the bits with interactions between Anne and Gilbert–the beginning up until he proposes and she rejects him and then the end when she comes back home and he is sick and Anne “reads” her “Book of Revelation” and then they hook up.
OK, with the confession aside that I actually enjoy the romantic bits–I feel the tension and wait for the pay-off and can bear repeated viewings–much as the fairer sex does, let me hasten to add that this is not true with me for just any romantic movie. For a romantic movie to really work for me the characters have to be good, or redeemed, and the movie must be noble and celebrate goodness. Messy, morally muddled, romantic movies, I really have no appetite for.
And the Anne of Green Gables books and movies present a universe in which goodness is celebrated, even amidst the potential for wickedness. After all, Anne’s says that though she does want a husband who is good, he should at a least be able to be wicked but chooses not to. I think there are some echoes of Eden here, and Avonlea is, indeed, Edenic. That is why I think it appeals to me. If our first parents who were good with the potential to be wicked had not exercised that perogative, we would still be there. And all our longings now, our deepest longings, are to get back there, to live in harmony with others, with nature, and with God.
Last night, I made it a point to watch one of the scenarios that I find especially appealing in this movie. It is when Anne, despite repeated rebuffs to her efforts to befriend her, persists in inviting the wounded and bitter school teacher Katharine Brook to Avonlea for the summer. Katharine comes, and after a summer of fellowship, with people and nature, is transformed, her bitterness diluted and disappearing. It is not the most subtle piece of cinema, but I love it nonetheless.
It is what I think true hospitality is all about, to extend blessings, to extend comfort, to extend love. To take not just material wealth and spread it about, but real family capital, which is far harder to come by, and share that too. It may not have idyllic or immediate results as did Anne’s generosity, but I think it is what we are called to nonetheless.
Families, if they work as they should, provide these sorts of comforts to one another all the time, intrinsically, naturally. In some of my darkest days, I would drive the extra twenty minutes to my brother’s house in St. Louis simply to not be alone, to hold the baby, to talk, even if nothing substantively healing or edifying were said, to go to sleep in that little yellow room above Chouteau street, and to be woken by my brother in the morning with a word or a hug. These days, much less broken, on Friday mornings, and as I was this morning, I am awoken by a niece and nephew or two who tip toe down and exude more energy than seems possible for that time in the morning.
And I think that families and family of God, if they work as they should, are also called, as challenging and perplexing as it may seem, to share that love with the lonely…
A poem from 1993
Avonlea
In Avonlea, a gentle breeze
Blows softly through mid-summer leaves,
And tickles ripples from the lake,
Then playful dances on its way.
In Africa, no breath of breeze
To comfort wraith-like, naked trees,
To blow back life to fill the lakes,
And drive the stench of death away.
Does God reside in Avonlea;
In bright and good His rule confine,
While death and night unchallenged rule
Without the bounds of sovereignty?
Or, did He share the agony
To hear discord in His symphony,
Forsake pure joy to take on pain,
Anemic of His majesty?
I will cherish life’s Avonleas
As foretastes of eternity,
But not lift long their joyous cup,
Lest, giddy, shun the cup He took.