Here are five things worth paying attention to this week. These are designed to expose you to a perspective you may not normally come across in your daily lives.

1. Sheepdogs or Pitbulls? The Los Angeles Times recently featured a front-page article on a conference at Mariners Church supported by the California Rifle and Pistol Association. The conference featured ministers—those quoted were ex-military and ex-police officers, now pastors—who do these national conferences on the necessity of armed guards in every church. They call them “Sheepdogs.” Guard the flock. Amazing the scriptures they quote. “Faith without works is dead,” they say. Dead, shot dead. “Never close your eyes to pray in church,” they counsel. “Keep on the lookout at all times.”

2. These six episodes of a priest’s life in a Northern England parish offer deep explorations of humanity. Produced for British TV by the BBC, with amazing sensitivity to the inner lives of both pastor and parishioner, the show goes into the souls of broken people to awaken empathy and sharpen moral discernment. Father Michael lights a candle before every pastoral conversation to remind the participants that Christ is present, and when the film ends, you find the candle is still burning in your own consciousness.

3. First Reformed is a movie you will think of whenever you hear the word “despair.” A film you will see again and again on the screen of memory in reverie. Paul Schrader, the son of the Grand Rapids, Michigan, Calvin College and the Reformed community has a Calvinist’s eye toward depravity and a prophet’s warning about the downward path of his heroes. Schrader has written and directed this troubling but achingly vivid story of a failing pastor, Ethan Hawk, who is confronted by a personal and global moral dilemma, an adjoining church that denies it, a community oblivious to it and the inevitability—not to decide is to decide—of choice.

4. We left the theater amazed at the life, courage, gifts, wisdom of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The documentary on her life, heritage and role in calling for equality in U.S. American life challenged resistant patriarchy that assumed unwarranted and undeserved entitlement. But winning five out of the first six cases she took before the U.S. Supreme Court, and ultimately serving on that highest court, is beyond our best hopes. Now as the court leans rightward, her “I dissent” remains a witness to a distributive justice in a context of more narrow forms. Whichever way you may lean, RBG is a way to see how brilliance and humility can blend into a new amalgam of precious metals.

5. Fresh herbs from the garden. Just outside our back door in raised beds grow basil, mint, marjoram, tarragon, dill, sage, oregano, thyme, chives, lemon grass, tansy and varieties of chilies. “One of the great joys of my life,” Leann said this morning, “is to be able to walk out and gather a handful of fresh flavors and chop them into a dressing or a quiche.” We talk about the distinctive scent and taste of each. We hope you are finding summertime excitement and gratitude “on the tip of the tongue.”