NOOKS AND CRANNIES

IT CAN HAVE A CERTAIN DESPERATION TO IT—we searched every nook and cranny. Or, you can describe your hoarding auntie—she has stuff crammed in every nook and cranny. Or, maybe it can prompt some sort of adventure—let’s explore every nook and cranny. Let’s talk about that one.

The Cambridge dictionary says that nooks and crannies are: every part of a place.

Dictionary.com says: Everywhere. This metaphoric idiom pairs nook, which has meant “an out-of-the-way corner” since the mid-1300s, with cranny, which has meant “a crack or crevice” since about 1440.

Since we’re going to go digging through nooks and crannies as a sort of adventure let’s start with the places. Places can be literal like an attic or basement, a library and even a book. Places can be your town, or your state, or beyond. Think about people like Lewis and his buddy Clark. As they trekked mapless across the continent it was pretty much all nooks and crannies. But, let’s go further, let’s say a place full of nooks and crannies can be your own mind and soul, your memories and your stories.

My adventure for now is sleuthing for goodness, truth and beauty in our modern day culture and in myself. I’m going to confess some despair, because in the thin, wide open, garishly-lit places of the 24-hour news cycles, politics, religion, social media, pop-culture, etc. I’m not finding much; goodness, truth, beauty that is. So, these must surely be in the nooks and crannies. I know they haven’t gone away completely. It’s just that most everything else is so loud, chaotic, shrill, flashing, strobing, grating, grinding, shallow, deceptive, false and dissimulating.

It sounds like I’m describing the Las Vegas strip. It’s kind of pretentious like that, but more pervasive and sneaky and ugly. I’ve been to Vegas twice: once for a trade show, once to accept an award for a web design project. I don’t like it at all. It’s not that I’m taking some moral highground, but I’ve been to Paris. I’ve been to New York many times. I would suggest that if you want to experience either, go there; not to some gaudy Vegas charade of those two great cities. (Although I would recommend seeing the 1963 film “Charade” starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.)

Excuse me while I get my train back on the tracks.

Do you find all of this—our current state of affairs—a bit disorienting? I do. Do you sort of despise the “new normal”? I do. Do you long for something solid that you can count on? I realize this is beginning to sound like a set up for some product I’m selling like an herb or oil or potion, like a wand Harry or Hermione might have, or maybe a book or a sermon. Sorry.

I do have this though: there is goodness, truth and beauty all around us. There is a certain joy in the search and in the discovery. Looking in the nooks and crannies always promises a eureka moment. I often find them in song lyrics like this scripture turned popular song:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

Or, in a verse:

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” —Jesus

Sometimes we can find them vicariously. Surely by now you’ve heard the stories of Steve Hartman. He is the Sherlock Holmes of uncovering goodness, truth and beauty; along the road. Here is his Facebook page. Click and rejoice. Discover them through Steve’s encounters.

Where do you find goodness, truth and beauty?