Sensational & Salacious Stories & Scandals

One of the most discouraging things about blogging is that posts that tend toward the scandalous, sensational, and disturbing are by far the most popular. I say “tend toward” because not much on this blog is ever all that scandalous or sensational. But “bad” news is more popular than happy news, I’m afraid. There are bloggers out there (like Amanda Blake Soule–“Soulemama”) who do a brisk business writing exclusively happy crafty sunshine-y posts, but around here, the most-read, most-searched posts tend to be the ones involving eating disorders, deaths, and celebrity gossip.

What can I say?

Those things are more ‘thrilling’ than, well, soup. 

Most of life, though? Much more soup-and-salad than salacious-and-scandalous.

As Robert Frost wrote:

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned in life: It goes on.”

And it does. I was struck by this in a new way last week, when, after our friend Sam’s funeral, we shared lunch with a few other friends at a small pub in Philadelphia. Here we had spent more than two hours reflecting on, mourning, and crying over the life and death of our friend, and then in the next hour there we were with food and drink around a table. Because even grieving people get hungry eventually. Eating after funerals is a time-honored tradition–remember the very end of The Brothers Karamazov?

“Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don’t be put out by our eating pancakes–it’s a very old custom and there’s something nice in that!” laughed Alyosha.”

Even if most of us prefer to read about something more exciting than soup, I’m comforted by the ordinary soup-and-bread kind of days: these things make up a sort of “litany of everyday life.”

Besides, while we anticipate the Supper of the Lamb, what do we pray; of what do we partake?

Of course.

Our daily Bread. The Bread of Life.

And that–and He–is better than thrilling.