There's Beauty in the Bellow

Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with one of the falsest first lines of literature; he writes that "happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." With novels and memoirs full of dysfunctional families of perverse individuals, perhaps we are congratulating ourselves in our unhappiness that at least we are not like those boring happy folks. But perversion, being parasitical, is capable of only so many permutations. Every happy family has found its own way of creating an organic being from a few vagrant individuals. "Dysfunctional family" must be a cliche by now. The "Books" section of The New York Times is probably the most boring part of the paper after "U.S. News." But I love invites to family dinners, to watch the members speak to, and listen to them speak of, one another, to see their different methods of life. Last night, I listened to a wife talk about her husband's annual spring itch to drive to Washing

I came across this hymn: God be in my head and in my understanding; God be in my eyes, and in my looking; God be in my mouth, and in my speaking; God be in my heart, and in my thinking; God be at my end, and at my departing. Setting by Sir Henry Walford-Davies