~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
Every Thursday, here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
There are so many things on my mind.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how we modern people can't escape applying modern remedies to problems, even when the problems are modern ones to start with. So please forgive a little rumination with your {phfr} today.
I don't mean modern in the sense of “technological.” Modern in the sense of separated from a sense of wholeness. I'll call it a fatal anguish over the inability to connect with an authentic reference point outside of ourselves; often it's anguish over the fact that others are experiencing this failure.
We can identify a lack of centeredness in our world, but our response is to try to convince ourselves and others of the importance of centeredness by means of plans and programs, our faith in which is rock solid — against experience! The more the programs increase our tension, the more we seem to have recourse to them. We have checklists for our checklists! We don't notice that our precious plans drive people away.
When really, what we need to know is what Walter Bagehot advised: The way to keep old customs is to enjoy old customs.
That's a laconic British way of packing a lot of wisdom into a little sentence.
Enjoyment is pretty hard to come by in our impatient, energetic times. To our sensibilities, enjoyment seems inimical to our serious and stressed way of approaching life. We suspect it. Seems wrong somehow. But… give it a chance. The secret is in the part about “old customs.”
The oldest of all are the ones that relate to family life and to Liturgy, to worship. Begin with Sunday. Worship, celebration, rest. These are what will restore our spirits and bring the world back to its senses, with nary a program to explain it all. If you begin with Sunday, you will find that your whole week has a new meaning.
Live your Sunday! You will see how the world around you changes.
{pretty}
Picked the last of the zinnias before the frost… but didn't get to the hydrangeas. Sigh. They were so pretty and now they are all brown.
{happy}
Of course he had to rub his white fur up against my fuzzy tights.
The honey is all harvested — that red box has the frames for the bees to clean, as described in the honey-harvest post by the Chief. (By the way, for contrast with this year's late, dark honey, here are pictures of the capped honey frames from a harvest earlier in the season, five years ago. So different!)
{funny}
A vine that volunteered in the pepper bed turned out to be a single-fruited cantaloupe plant that missed the memo on timing (that is a cereal bowl there for scale):
[inlinkz_linkup id=575032 mode=1]
Mrs. B. says
Leila, could it be that, because so many of us didn’t grow up with that natural enjoyment, now it has to be recreated and it will taste a bit artificial for a while, maybe for another generation, until it becomes a more natural way of living and thinking again? At least in our families and our circle of friends – that it will be possible to re-civilize society this way is an open question… I think all the “planning” means we’re not sure of ourselves, that we don’t want to forget anything or we’ll feel we’ve failed (I say “we”, but I’m a horrible planner and feel awful about it! Planning and having lists sound so “intentional”!) And I want to much to blame the Church for ditching a lot of the collective memory and of her rich liturgies as a useless burden – what a failure of the imagination, what a misjudgement of human nature…
Or maybe you were trying to say something different?
Adele says
I hope you have a good recipie for those green tomatoes. Our favorite salsa is a green tomato one from Simply in Season. I feel like people get altogether carried away with celebrations and most things in general. Your house does not need to be spotless to have people over, baking a cake makes a perfectly respectable party, and traditions can and should start tiny. Perhaps our tendency to over do traditions and make them into a huge rigamaroll is part of the difficulty. Also there seems to be a great reluctance to try something lest it fail.
Anel says
Enjoyment…aah. Almost a foreign word..
I suspect it is a combination of many things [not being Catholic, I can’t even venture there – but I have started making our Sunday special.], not least of which has to do with the “double income trap” and “school”.
Our daily schedule:
everyone out of the house at around 7.15am, and back again at 5.30pm
2-3 tests per week per child [most weekends are spent studying, or prompting a kid to study..]
1-2 project/oral per week per child
1-2 extra curricular per week per child [rugby and or tennis and or high jump and or cricket]
Am I the only one that is climbing into bed at night DEAD tired? With no enjoyment that was squeezed into the day that passed so unobserved?
Might that also be the reason why “enjoyment” has been reduced to only the food and drink, that in the past was only *part* of the enjoyment?
Well. We should put our foots down..
Thanks for these weekly posts LMDL!
Tia says
Leila, Somehow I vaguely remember pictures of a black and white cat. Was that your cat and what happened to him/her?
Anel, think you’re on to something. There are many many factors in modern life that conspire to rob us of a sense of wholeness, and all this intense business and the idea that no single moment of our day must be unaccounted for is one.
I’m not sure that our focus on eating and drinking as a primary draw/enjoyment is new though! it’s worth noting that even thousands of years ago, people were getting together for big celebrations and the big draw was food and drink, at least if archaeological evidence is to be believed.
logan says
It’s interesting that here in Cameroon people know how to just be. They do it very well. They have literally nothing, but that won’t stop anyone from enjoying themselves and moreover eachother. Every single westerner who comes here (Christian and otherwise) just feels like it’s an incredible waste of time. But after being here three years, I now think the African might have the better way. I’m starting to be sad that we will come home and afraid that it might be lonely now for us in America since we have learned to care more about people than schedules or things. 🙁
Jenn says
Live your Sunday. Yes! There’s deep beauty and purpose in beginning the week with rest and worship.
Mary Lou says
… and we cannot even pray because our minds and hearts are so filled with ‘just everything’ that we cannot be quiet long enough to hear or feel loved by God. Even our Sundays are a little warped because we’re trying to rest in a restless world … and we are human. Nothing short of a miracle can reverse the tide that we are so often trying to push against, losing our strength for the ‘lived experience’. Come Holy Spirit, come …
Donna Marie says
I have been listening to Fr. (Bishop!) Robert Barron’s CD Untold Blessing: Three Paths to Holiness. In it, he talks about finding your center in Christ and what that means. Beautiful. We need a good center to lean on…I would like to dwell in that place, where the beloved is…the place of blessing <3
stclementmom says
Sometimes I find myself stopping and enjoying our little family in the midst of the chaos. It’s a pretty nice feeling, and it is almost always followed by worry that maybe I’m forgetting something more important I should be doing.
Becky g says
That first photo gave me a flashback! Remember years ago when you hosted a “Pretty Over The Kitchen Sink” link-up? Well, it was through the pretty kitchen sink link at Ginny’s blog that I found your website! Anyway, cheers to you for having your pretty photo in a place that is, in my house, never pretty. I appreciate the reminder to get my act together and fix up the place where I seem to spend so much of my day.
Terri says
Ha–I have a white dog that does the same thing. I think he waits until I’m dressed for work (which is in black 90% of the time) to come lean against me.
Laura says
I just read a 2-book series called “The Good Master” and “The Singing Tree”. Which are stories from the early 1900s in Hungary, and the people were mostly Catholic, I think (maybe Russian Orthodox?? I’m protestant, so I’m quite clueless). but there was pageantry and customs and traditions and food/drink, and high holy days and the people truly did ENJOY those things. Mostly, the story was about a well–to-do farming family who worked through the days according to the flow/work of the needs of the farm, with some frolics like weddings, baptisms, etc thrown in. They were busy, no doubt. But the children in the story were working alongside their parents (or aunts/uncles) and learning to do the necessary work or to beautify it somehow(the mother in the story wears traditional garb and the embroidery she does is intricate and painstaking, for example. They didn’t just garden for sustenance, they had beds of just flowers, for the beauty’s sake!) The roles in gender were strong and distinct and both were appreciated–the boys didn’t have to embroider, the girls didn’t have to shoe the horses or butcher the pigs! Every time I read a story that has a strong tie to traditional, strongly cultural living, I feel nostalgic, lost, sad, and cluttered, and bored. I look around my mess, wonder why I have so much junk, and enjoy so little and wonder how to get on track. Unfortunately, too, Protestant churches (especially in the anabaptist tradition), are notoriously horrid for keeping the collective memory and the few traditions they might try and keep (a Christmas pageant for example), they ruin, but trying to make them “hip” and “relevant to today’s culture” *faugh!* I too had no example to follow and my parents didn’t either… i know EXACTLY what you were trying to elucidate!
Anel says
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Rosie says
Yes, those are wonderful books! I’ve been meaning to do a library project post on them…
Mrs. B. says
Thank you for these book recommendations! I love to discover great books…
Lisa says
Thanks for your ruminations, Leila. I was just beginning to get really drawn in when you referenced that”fatal anguish at not being able to connect with an authentic reference point outside ourselves” but you need to develop that idea more….please come back to it in another post. It was quite interesting and I’d like to learn more – I think I can relate.
Lisa
Teri Pittman says
I read an article by a tech guy, talking about the Amish. It’s not that they are anti-technology. They want to consider a technology’s impact on the family, before they allow it into their lives. I think that is a wise way to live. Think of how television, computers and cell phones have affected family life and personal interaction. We need to draw some boundaries.
What has made me slow down is a Springer. He’s an active dog, so I’ve spent a lot of time outside with him. (I even knit a sweater mostly outside! ) He’s a real clown and sticks to me like velcro. And he helps me be happy, by just being here now.