It is a snow day here in the foothills of the Southern Appalachians. And that means lots of quiet, a good fire in the buck stove, and Andy Griffith reruns on the TV.
No matter that we only got about 3 inches of snow and it is now melting. For this one day and maybe tomorrow, it is a snow day and everything moves slowly.
As I watch life in Mayberry, enjoying the slow pace, I realize some of what made this program so popular, even though it has been gone from production so many years and almost all the actors are now dead. It not only showed a slow pace of small town, the show itself was slow.
It took time.
It took time to reveal the setting, to develop the characters. With none of the modern advantages of special effects, it instead would take five or ten minutes of a half-hour program to show exactly why Barney took singing in the choir so seriously. Or what Otis' homelife is really like. Or who Mr. MacBeevee really is. It did not hurry to rush to the punchline.
When I see the punchline in the McKenna books in my mind's eye, I have to remind myself of that. Don't hurry. Don't glide over the everyday to get to it. Let the woof and weave of life be brought to the fore, let the reader smell the coffee when Shiloh pours it, or hear the spoon against the china cup as Jordan stirs in the cream, and listen to them talking about their day, not just race off to another earthquake.
The everyday makes the solid foundation. It makes the earth. Then, there can be an earthquake, if there has to be, but you have to have an earth to quake to make sense of it. You have to know the peace of the everyday to appreciate the disturbing of it.
The McKenna books are not the Andy Griffith Show. Dooley is not Mayberry. But I hope that I take enough time for the reader to sit in the kitchens, stroll across the vegetable gardens, and lean on the fences of the McKenna farms that he feels the breathing of the land and gets at home in the normal life in the Family.
Then, it's on to another adventure...maybe a slow one like Opie accidentally breaking Aunt Bea's rose, but an adventure just the same. After all, everyday adventures are the most important.