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Mrs. Harris goes to Paris . . . and on to heaven

Mrs. Harris goes to Paris . . . and on to heaven

Last updated on: May 3, 2026 at 4:37 pm by Dan Peterson

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Mrs. Harris goes to Paris . . . and on to heaven 2026-05-03T16:37:32-06:00 Dan Peterson

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An aerial view of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. We are staying for a few nights, while we wait for our group to assemble from America, about ten minutes’ walk from the Cathedral. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I decided almost immediately upon boarding the plane yesterday that I was too tired to read anything serious while on board. So I watched four (4) movies and slept not a single wink during the flight. Here is my movie diet during our crossing from North America to the British Isles. Thus armed, the Peterson Obsession Board is likely to point out my poor taste and the lowbrow character of my viewing choices:

Mercy (2026), with Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson

The Running Man (2025)

Sarah’s Oil (2025)

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022), starring Lesley Manville

I liked and enjoyed all four of the films. And they certainly helped to pass the time. The first two are dystopian stories with some science-fiction elements; Mercy is set in the relatively near future in Los Angeles and The Running Man is located in the less-near-future in Boston and apparently comes from a novel or short story by Stephen King. The third, a bittersweet but overall heart-warming tale about a young black girl in early-twentieth-century rural Oklahoma, is based on a true story (how much it has been fictionalized I don’t know). Surprisingly, and in ways that I would find difficult to articulate with any degree of specificity, its musical score and cinematography and approach and general sensibility struck me at several points as reminiscent of the dramatic films Witnesses and Six Days in August that have been created by the Interpreter Foundation and Redbrick Filmworks. That may perhaps be due, in part, to the fact that, although it’s not overly preachy and certainly isn’t a work of Latter-day Saint cinematography, Sarah’s Oil appears to be, as some commenters had said, a “faith-based film.”

Finally, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is a sweet and touching story about a selflessly kind and unassuming woman that my wife and I saw for the first time as a musical play at The Ruth and Nathan Hale Theater in Pleasant Grove, Utah, a few months back. It’s based on the 1958 Paul Gallico novel Mrs. ’Arris Goes to Paris and, I think, depicts quite beautifully the yearning that even seemingly insignificant and “invisible” people feel for something extraordinary and important — and that I believe they will receive, if not in this life, in the life to come (to a degree that will astonish them and everybody else):

As it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (1 Corinthians 2:9)

The University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, as viewed from Radcliffe Square. The walls of All Souls College are visible on the left and the chapel of Brasenose College on the far right. C. S. Lewis delivered “The Weight of Glory” as a sermon or address in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin on 8 June 1941. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

In this context a familiar but still wonderful passage from C. S. Lewis’s 1941 essay “The Weight of Glory” comes irresistibly to mind:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

We’ll be talking about C. S. Lewis during this forthcoming tour. He illustrates the point that I’ve just cited from “The Weight of Glory” at several points in his writing, but the mention that comes to my mind at the moment is the character of Sarah Smith in The Great Divorce (1946). She was an ordinary, completely unknown woman — “invisible,” like Mrs. Harris — who spent her earthly life in the London suburb of Golders Green but who is “one of the great ones” in Heaven, where she is a dazzling, radiant figure who is seen by the story’s narrator surrounded by a joyous procession of the children she loved in mortality and the bright and beautiful spirits of the animals for whom she cared during her lifetime.

I believe this. As the Savior himself said at Matthew 20:16 (compare 19:30), “the last shall be first, and the first last.” Heaven’s valuation of mortal lives will likely not coincide very neatly with our notions of prominence or worth in business, academia, politics, sports, or public acclaim.

Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531-1588), who often chronicles my daily meals, kindly prepared this sketch of today’s hotel meal for use on my blog. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

And, oh yes, I should probably mention that I ate while on the plane, thus proving to the careful Peterson Obsession Board observer that my life largely revolves around food. (I’m not very fond of in-flight Delta Airlines meals, and I ate little of what I was served. But candor compels me to acknowledge that I did eat a bit of it.) And, as a matter of fact, I’ve already eaten here in London, just as I’ve eaten in London on previous visits to the city. (I have, quite literally, eaten in most of the fifty states and across a multitude of countries in North, South, and Central America, in the British Isles and on the European Continent, in Africa, in Australia, in Oceania, and Asia. It’s disgraceful, really: I’ve eaten food just about every day of my entire life.)

Meanwhile, while I’m wolfing down pizzas at every meal and guzzling chocolate milk between meals, you should take a look at the thirty-seven second trailer for Episode 15 of Becoming Brigham. It’s about the sometimes rough relationship between Brigham Young and Emma Smith.

Posted from London, England

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Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

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