Curling

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Curling

When the angel stretched forth his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it,

the LORD regretted the calamity and said to the angel causing the destruction

among the people, “Enough now! Stay your hand.”

Curling, which Canadian author Louise Penny called a “thrilling sport,” kickstarts the Milan/Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics at noon today. Teams from Canada and the Czech Republic will tease their stones down carefully prepared, perfectly level 150- foot sheets of pebbled ice and hope for the best. Warm and toasty, we can watch.

The granite stones (“rocks”) are mostly made in Scotland and Wales, weigh around 40 pounds and last for years. They can be dangerous, I guess, although they don’t get used often as weapons. Louise Penny did not use them that way. In A Fatal Grace she chose electricity instead.

But in her book some of the local women (all in their 70’s and 80’s) loved the game and offered to show the Montreal homicide detectives the art of their favorite game.

The curling stone thundered down the rough ice and hit the rock at the far end with a huge bang that moments later bounced off the hills surrounding Lac Brume. It was a bitterly cold morning, the coldest of the winter so far and the mercury still falling. By midday their flesh would freeze in seconds. The sun, teasing them with light but no warmth, hit the snow and magnified, blinding anyone not wearing dark glasses.

Billy Williams had cleared the curling surface on Lac Brume for them, and now he, Beauvoir, Lemieux and Gamache watched tiny Émilie Longpré straighten up, her breath coming out in jagged puffs. Not long, thought Gamache. We’ll have to get her in soon before she freezes. Before we all do.

‘Now kneel down, Inspector. You grab the handle of the rock as though you’re going to shake hands.’ She was bending over him. ‘Now, you bring the rock back with your right arm and your left leg also swings back, then you bring both forward at the same time and slide down the ice, the rock leading the way. Don’t shove it, mind. Just release.’

Beauvoir looked down the curling rink to her stone at the far end. It suddenly seemed very far away. Gamache watched Beauvoir take a deep breath and bring his right hand back, the rock threatening to overbalance him already. Beauvoir remembered the silly broom and leaned over on it, feeling his boots begin to slip. This couldn’t be right.

The rock thumped onto the ice and he gave a great heave, knowing he’d somehow lost the momentum he was meant to build up. His right arm shot out, still clinging to the stone, and his left leg scrambled. Beauvoir fell flat on the ice, arms and legs splayed, the stone still in his grip … ‘Did I win?’ Beauvoir brushed himself off and stared at the curling stone still sitting at his feet.

‘Depends what game you’re playing.’ Em smiled. ‘You’ve definitely mastered the stationary stone game. Félicitations.’

‘Merci, madame.’ The terrible cold of the day was kind to the Inspector. It hid any blush he might have produced. As he looked at the rock sitting forlornly at his feet a grudging, and secret, respect for curlers was born in Beauvoir.

Why can so many readers never get enough of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache stories? Hope Dellon, one of her editors over the years, has this to say:

When I’m asked what makes her books so great, I usually fall back on a quote from Emily Dickinson: “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” That’s how I feel about Louise’s novels.

Inspector Gamache challenges me to try my own sleuthing, and then he invites quieter literary and spiritual investigation. Often I realize I’ve been waiting for my own spirit, usually lost somewhere in the business of the day, to show up, very grateful for an opportunity to get a word in.

For this shall every faithful man pray to you

in time of stress.

Though deep waters overflow,

they shall not reach him.

Reading the Bible of course is meant to draw me in like this, and it does. History, literature, psychology, and religion cry out to be woven into a piece, covering me like a quilt but also shoving me onto the ice, pushing me to slide toward a goal, mostly unnameable, but always all that matters.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is God.

And then it doesn’t matter how cold it is.

You are my shelter; from distress you will preserve me;

with glad cries of freedom you will ring me round.

(2 Samuel 24, Psalm 32, John 10, Mark 6)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

#