These are a few of my favourite things...

Langston Hughes, Martin Luther, Little Forest, and more.

Daffodils… just in time for Saint David’s Day

Dear Friends,

Happy Saturday! How was your week? This is the first week since the launch that things have slowed down a bit for me. The days are finally becoming brighter, and the daffodils have started to bloom just in time for Saint David’s Day (yesterday). It is my namesake niece’s (Lilian Joy) birthday, and all in all Spring seems to be underway. I embrace this with a great sigh of relief. Living so far north, the winter is not only very cold but very dark and the early months of the year can be quite grim, which I find often affects me with a kind of gloominess. There’s something wonderful about the way daffodils, in all their bright and cheerful glorious yellow, announce that Spring is finally coming. Have hope!

My great accomplishment for the week was getting three bunches of daffodils at Tesco for forty-six pence (less than one US dollar)— a steal I’d say!

But enough about daffodils! At the end of each chapter of You are a Tree, I shared a section called Living, Thinking, and Praying where I included suggestions for further reading, paintings, movies, music, and scripture readings that one could engagement with to meditate further on particular metaphors.

For instance, this is the one I made for the chapter Wisdom is (not) Light:

(Not included here is the following page in which I provide some explanation of each work of art along with some food for thought on engaging it)

Order You are a Tree today!

I am very proud of these little sections, and I took a lot of time think through what I wanted to include. I wanted these sections to enrich the reader’s experience of the book and more importantly the world. I included art and literature from all over the world, and most pertinently, art that I really, really love. So this week, I thought that this week, I’d share a few of my favourite recommendations from You are a Tree and tell you about why I love them. I’m also attaching the Spotify playlist I made for the book, which includes many of the songs referenced in the Living, Thinking, Praying sections, but also other songs which are either in the book or connected with it in my mind. To be honest, I think it’s one of the better playlists I’ve created. Listen to it on shuffle.

See if you can identify how each song relates to the book…