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Good morning.  In a rare interview to mark publication of her new book, Three Days In June, the novelist Anne Tyler was asked about the kind of people she writes about. 

‘Over and over again,’ she replied. ‘I’m struck by how ordinary people get through their day. Sometimes it strikes me as a sort of miracle…’

People with little to hope for still behave very well. Endurance, she said, is ‘the most moving quality of human beings.’

Reading this my mind went to a neighbour on a nearby street who I talk with most days as he pushes his wheelchair-bound adult son to the shops. 

It’s an Herculean task and he is his son’s sole carer but he remains inexplicably buoyant and resilient.

And I thought of Andi who three times a year for the last twenty has cut my hair, a briefer task with each visit. 

As I waited this last time she was booking a taxi to the hospital for her previous customer. ‘I’m worried she’s not at all well today,’ she told me. ‘And she’s on her own… I’ll call her later to see how she’s doing.’

The news is not just what we hear on programmes like this and it’s not just national or global. 

There is another edition which is local and particular. There’s breaking news and healing news. News just in and news that never left. 

Although there is news we can’t do much about,  there’s also news we can.  

The business author Stephen Covey, famous for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, captured this in describing two circles – one of concern and one of control.

The circle of concern holds what we care about, from our anxieties to our aspirations. This might be existential like the climate emergency or personal like our salary or health.

But the circle of control holds what we can influence - this is the realm of our attitudes and actions, the unsung ways in which we may add life to those around us. 

And witnessing the quiet endurance and compassion among our families or our friends is some consolation in the face of events beyond our control.

In one of the most divine stories of Jesus of Nazareth, he explained to his friends about all the times they had bumped into god… but hadn’t known it at the time. 

When you made time for the person who was sick, who was sleeping rough, who was hungry, who was in prison - that’s when you met god he said.

Which reminds me of the title of an earlier Ann Tyler novel. That one was called Saint Maybe.

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