Just finished Dicken’s Great Expectations with our older girls as an evening read aloud, a project which has lasted two years for us. It is hard to have patience in our age of soundbites with an author who was paid by the word and often seemed to multiply characters needlessly. But any reader who has spent time with his tomes and become acquainted with his universe of characters knows the power they have of teaching charity and a host of other virtues to hearts grown cold with indifference and self-centeredness.
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When a sick queen died, a horrible witch strove to become the heir of the throne. The king chose her as his wife, not knowing that she was a witch. But she deceived him completely and transformed the king’s seven sons into swans. The king’s daughter then married and saved her brothers from the nasty queen’s spell by making magic shirts for them which turned them back into princes. This book started in the Russian language for children, and you may find it at the library in the fairy tale section.
There is a joke among recovering fundamentalist Christians. It goes, “Why is pre-marital sex so wrong? Because it might lead to dancing.” While most Christians can agree with the former prohibition against sex outside of marriage, the latter taboo has brought frustration to many a footloose Christian who begs for a definition of exactly what kind of dancing leads to moral degradation. As for this recovering fundamentalist, I have never been happier than the first time I witnessed centuries-old folk dancing going on right in the fellowship hall of an Eastern Orthodox church. You can even say it was one of the things that led me to the Church. 
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