Now that’s living.

I’m in the airport this morning, traveling again. I deliberately chose not to blog this weekend on the protests, race, politics, or anything like it. Emotions are too raw, and I don’t want to say anything in haste that I might regret at leisure. I’d like to share some VFYTs with you, as perhaps a balm before what is sure to be a rough week.

The vacationing American reader writes:

We are in Dunster, a medieval village in Somerset, England. Today, we visited Cleeve Abbey, a ruined Cistercian abbey that is close to Dunster: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/cleeve-abbey/. The Abbey church was destroyed completely at the time of the Dissolution, but the sacristy, the monks’ dormitory, and the refectory survived in amazingly good condition, as did (to some extent) the cloister, so it is well worth visiting. They have the Rule of St. Benedict for sale in the gift shop. I attach views of the Abbey gatehouse from our picnic table for your consideration. We bought our picnic food at the Dunster Village Shop and Deli, including their “cheese of the week,” Pendragon Buffalo Cheese from the Somerset Cheese Company:
https://www.somersetcheese.co.uk/product/pendragon-buffalo-cheese/.

After visiting the Abbey, we went to Mass in nearby Watchet, where the Catholic Mass takes place in the Methodist church. We met the friendliest people you could imagine at the Mass and the coffee hour. Our children were invited to bring up the gifts at the Offertory.

The reader, whose taste in monkish beer is to be esteemed, writes:

An aperitif with friends from our Episcopal church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Two of us, one from each family, are regular readers of your blog, and one other has read and appreciated “Crunchy Cons”.

For an extra little bit of Dreher-ness, I set up the audio system in the background to be playing James MacMillan’s choral anthem “After Virtue” — a setting of that famous paragraph of Alasdair MacIntyre’s.

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W14454_GBAJY1397010

These below are not strictly VFYTs, because there’s no table involved, but there’s food, and wow, what a view!

The reader writes:

The Admiralty Inlet, Whidbey Island, WA, where vessels — cruise ships, Trident subs, barges — head out to sea to Alaska, Canada, and beyond.

11 years we’ve been returning to this spot. Although salmon, mussels — nearby Penn Cove is the oldest mussel farm in the country — is the norm, I’m grilling steaks on Puget Sound tonight, watching the ferry cross to Port Townsend and back.