Keeping House Book Study Chapter Eight

(vintage kitchen by janet hill)

So much has been happening recently that I was not able to sit down at the computer for long enough to write about chapter 7.   In the interests of keeping on schedule, and because we already discussed food a little bit, I am going to move on to:  

Chapter Eight:  The Well Kept House!

This is the last chapter.    I am going to continue for one more week after this one, in order to wrap up the study, and you are welcome to join in with any loose ends or reflections or thoughts inspired by the study. 

IT is timely for me to think about the well kept house!   In the past week I have traveled from my mom's home in Wasilla, to my sons' apartment in Oregon, and now to my own log home in the Sierra Mountains.   

A few considerations from the chapter on the attributes of a well kept home:

1.  Importance: 

It is an important part of Christian living to have a well managed house.   Look at 1 Timothy 3 which describes the qualifications for a deacon.   Much of it is intrinsically tied in with the man's management of his own household and family as well as his own personal temperance and honesty.

2.  Hospitality.   

Hospitality meant a different thing in Biblical times than it seems to nowadays.  It meant welcoming the stranger or wayfarer, and was a sort of return to others of what God had given to Israel, or individually to us. 

For this reason, hospitality nowadays doesn't have to mean so much spotless perfection or elegant dining, but simply sharing one's life with others.

3.  Dealing with the basics.   

How much better to focus on meeting basic needs with dignity and care, rather than shoot for some standard of elegance and perfection!  I know that when I visited my Mom's house I was struck by how she has set things up so that hospitality is almost second nature.   Everything is clean and simple and smells good and looks nice.  She doesn't tend to worry about having everything perfectly ordered.     We owe our own families this kind of care, too; and since care is a communal effort, all the members of the family should participate in keeping things up.  It shouldn't be the job of just one person (usually, statisfically, the mom).

4.  Routines.  

Household routines are like church liturgies in that there is a daily, weekly, and seasonal routine and these things are not to be arbitrarily changed.   Oh, this is a huge topic!  In fact, routine is something I feel like I am lacking right at the moment, probably because of changing households three times in a week.   When I was with my mom, I felt like routines were very important in shaping the day and meeting with the various challenges of ill health and lots of things to get done.   Back at home, I'm floundering a bit more.   I think part of it is that routines tend to be naturally communal and cooperative.    When I am at home with my boys I feel like I am doing most of the pulling and tugging.    The temptation is to become discouraged.    I will let you know in a week or so where I am on this!

5.  Emergencies.   

What do you do when the routines break down?  I suppose I am somewhat there right now.    When things are in transition, or someone is sick, or newborn, or something else changes the status quo, then routines tend to develop glitches or fail to work.

Mrs Peterson makes a great point about safety.   A routine is not about maximum efficiency, so that the least disruption in the machinery means that it grinds over the individual needs of the members of the family.    Daily life has to have margin, safety -- so when a need comes up, it can be generously met. 

Another great point she makes is that maximum efficiency is often a way of devaluing work.  In other words, it is a kind of sloth.   When you are working like a machine, all the time, the work is essentially dehumanized and made into an end in itself rather than a means to an end.   Work becomes more important than the human worker, rather than the work being FOR the human.

I know that I personally have a temptation to work just to get it done.  Mrs Peterson mentions that work should be tucked into the corners and folds of life, be intrinsically bound into its fabric, not thought of as a huge separate block.   This is something I am glad to have a chance to think about this week particularly.

Nurturance and caregiving are notoriously inefficient. Insofar as housekeeping participates in and forms part of the infrastructure for nurturance and care, it makes good sense for housekeeping to be designed not for maximum efficiency but for appropriate redundancy. We need to plan to take enough time to do the work—perhaps not always as much time as might be ideal but enough time that on a normal day most of the things that need to be done can get done and on a hard day there are corners that can be cut.

This is my Thought for the Week!  It really goes against my natural grain, but it connects with my Word for 2012, Diligence.   Diligence is a kind of joyful care for the details.  .... a kind of nurturing care.  It is NOT machine-like efficiency.


In this context, I think of a book I read about a man who lived among the Amish for a year.   The Amish are notably hard workers, but he noticed that their work had little in common with factory-line efficiency.  As they farmed or built or whatever, little organic pauses were built into the rhythm of labor.   The work was human, not machine-like.

Household emergencies can be opportunities -- for giving and receiving help.    I noticed often when I had a newborn or our family was facing a medical crisis, the normal routines and productivity went by the board.   This is often frustrating, but the frustration is to an extent an immature response.   Crises and births and transitions are occasions for very unique and extraordinary graces.   To want "ordinary time" to continue all year around, with no feasts or fasts, would not be in any way a sign of sanctity; it's more like laziness.  Of course, I can say that and still feel my natural reluctance to have to change and grow and respond.

This chapter continues, but I think I have enough to think about for now.      Next week in my wrap-up post I will try to tie in whatever I can of those last few pages.   I hope you enjoyed this book study -- and will use next week to explore any trails that this study has brought up, or reflect on any new things you have learned.  

Keeping House Book Study Chapter 6

(vintage kitchen by janet hill)

This is chapter 6 of Keeping House:  A Litany of Everyday Life and is about Food to Eat.

"Food is so daily".   

And because of that,  it has a lot of significance to us as human being.   In the Bible, food is the occasion of the first sin, and food also becomes intrinsically connected with our salvation, prefigured in the Passover meal and in the manna in the desert, and then in the feeding of the five thousand, and finally coming to full significance in Jesus's declaration that He is the Bread of Life.    We are called upon as Christians to "feed the hungry"

This chapter is divided up into four aspects of food --  the eating of it, the food itself, the preparation of it, and who we eat with.    Since I have been up in Alaska visiting my mom I have been comparing how flexible and yet continuous these things are.

My mom likes to have things nice -- not rigidly perfect, just pretty nice.  She uses line-dried cotton or linen tablecloths and cloth placemats and napkins.  When I first came up here, since we were both ladies and we both eat fairly simply, we set out very simple meals three times a day.  But she has a lot of habits that keep even simple meals a ceremonial and pleasant occasion.  We set the table, we moved the food from cooking dish to serving dish, and we sat down to say a grace and eat.  My mom watches the news before dinner but always turns off the TV before sitting down to eat.   We make sure to have prepared a balance of fruit and vegetables, a wholegrain food and some meat or cheese or eggs.    We usually prepare the meals together, dividing up the little tasks.

In contrast, my boys' apartment in Eugene doesn't yet have a regular table and meals have to be plentiful and are often much less ceremonious.  They often eat in or around the kitchen and we use that chance to talk and sort of interact.

  And I noticed that when my brother showed up here, things were varied again.    My brother loves to cook (who knew?) and so he politely holds on to the kitchen proceedings and gets everything set up and prepared before calling us to eat.   Since he's a pastor he has often been reading a Psalm or improvising a grace since he showed up. 

What I am thinking is that food, its preparation and what it is and who serves it, and how it is served and eaten, are a very interesting mixture of individuality and commonality.   You probably can get a better idea of a family or society culture by watching how the meal is prepared and served and eaten, than almost any other way.

Meals are also a kind of teaching and learning through action.   But it's not the directly didactic kind of teaching; it's more like a teaching by participation.

So, perhaps a good time to reflect on meals you have partaken of in past years, what they said about what was going on, how these occasions look in your own family, and what you would like them to look like.     Since it's the New Year, it's a good time to reflect on your systems and what direction you want them to go in.  Any other reflections or rabbit trails on this chapter would also be welcome!

Photos from Wasilla

I realized that I missed posting last week's Keeping House book study.     I have been up in Alaska -- my mom's health has taken a rather sudden turn for the worse and that has kept me preoccupied enough so that I haven't been online much at all.    

Any prayers would be very much appreciated!

It has been breathlessly cold here -- down to minus 25 last night -- so I haven't been out much, but I took some pictures of the sunset last night through the upstairs window of her house.     The pictures are slightly blurry through the glass and don't do justice to the colors, but you can get an idea of the beauty -- the sunsets this far north come very early and last a long, long time especially since the sun has to sink below the mountains.

That little light in the second and third pictures?  It's someone enjoying their Martin Luther King weekend by ski-mobiling on the frozen lake!  Everyone has their own choice of enjoyment -- I am sure it was awesome being out there surrounded by the sky but the chill factor must be a beast!    Alaskans! 

In the next couple of days I'll put a book study post up but it might be shorter than usual.  

New Year Pictures

A Happy New Year!

Since I have not been posting here much and can't think of much to say I thought I would post some family pictures.  We have an unhappy tradition of family-picture-taking.   You can see that Clare is almost never the problem.  It's her brothers.  One is always sure to be frowning, or closing his eyes, or turning away, or trying to disappear off the edge of the picture or behind someone else's head..

Plus, I find California light challenging.   I will say no more. 

We went to our lake to get these pictures.  It has been historically drained to be cleaned out and have something else environmentally friendly done to it.    You can see it in the background of some of the pictures.

I don't know when all our family will be together again.  In a few days we all scatter to different parts of the Pacific coast.    To think, only 9 years ago Paddy was a newborn and my oldest was only 16!  No wonder I often feel dizzy!  

Good form, picture too backlit

A little overexposed now, Kieron is obscured and Paddy looks spacy.

Sean and Liam take a talk break

Nice background, but family all shadowy

Cute, but Sean is completely blocked

Clare and Paddy take some time off

Merry Christmas!

 

A rare picture of all our family together for the first time in a year!   Our clothes are even somewhat color-coordinated.   I suppose it is too much to ask that we all have open eyes at the same time.   

Wishing you all a very blessed Christmastide!

Questions, Wonder, Faith

Going for a walk this afternoon --  we have had a warm winter so far and the outdoors isn't covered with snow as it usually is -- I was thinking more about that quote about wonder and how it is the beginning of the road to wisdom.

I was thinking about how I can read a book or article, understand what I'm reading yet after I put it down remember almost nothing about it UNLESS (and this is what struck me) it was somewhat mysterious.   And there are all sorts of ways to be mysterious and therefore memorable.   My favorite poetry is somewhat obscure; and I often remember an essay better if I disagreed with it than when I completely agreed; and the stories I remember best are the ones that seem to open up a new vista or leave something unresolved.

It can't be a mystery of incompetence -- I don't like pretentiously obscure poetry, or blockheaded essays, or stories that have lots of loose ends because the writer dropped literary stitches as he wrote.   It has to be a puzzle or like a curtain that somehow shifted where I got a glimpse of something beautiful and strange, but the curtain fell back before I could see it completely.

Realizing this, I wonder if it could help me remember better what I read.  Study Skills courses tell me to pose myself questions as I read in order to remember, and this paralyzes me with disgusted boredom from the start.   It's sort of like looking at a Cosmo cover in the grocery line which promises to tell me how to attract my significant other.   I feel like something slimy has tried to drop on me. 

But in another way, it seems true that this wondering instinct leads me to muse and ponder, and those are the only ways to find out.   It is said more than once of Mary that she "pondered in her heart" and this is a very sign of how she recognized and acknowledged mystery without turning away from it as if it were merely a closed box marked "mystery here"


It seems like nowadays we either deny there is mystery, or think of it as a sort of shallow puzzle or distraction, or imbue it with a deceptive gnostic cloak,  turn away with fear and distrust in favor of something more easily grasped by our senses. 

We also teach badly by ignoring real questions in favor of ones that are too easily answerable.   Children start wondering as soon as their survival needs are met.     But it's easy to imply to them that learning is just stocking the head with information, and then they stop wondering.  

Cardinal Newman says that learning is ultimately directed towards wisdom or enlargement of mind, which is a very different thing from mere quantity of information. 

Or, again, the censure often passed on what is called undigested reading, shows us that knowledge without system is not Philosophy. Students who store themselves so amply with literature or science, that no room is left for determining the respective relations which exist between their acquisitions, one by one, are rather said to load their minds than to enlarge them.

Some other things that are different from true enlargement of mind, though they may masquerade as such: 

 love of system, theorizing, fancifulness, dogmatism, and bigotry

Aristotle (in the Metaphysics)  says similiarly that wisdom is not just a mass of particulars  

"Again, we do not regard any of the senses as Wisdom; yet surely these give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. But they do not tell us the 'why' of anything-e.g. why fire is hot; they only say that it is hot.

 So Wisdom is the knowledge of "what kind are the causes and the principles". 

It is in wondering, according to Aristotle, that we start on the journey to wisdom, not by doing or making things per se: 

"That it (wisdom) is not a science of production is clear even from the history of the earliest philosophers.  For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe.

And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake. 

 Newman talks about Wisdom somewhat differently, as beginning in Faith, but still "right judgment" is not all that different from knowledge of first principles and causes, except that (as Newman says later in his sermon) Faith can bypass and surpass the painful intellectual rigor needed to even approach by human means a partial understanding of these causes and principles. 

The Collect virtually speaks of Faith, when it makes mention of Almighty God's "teaching the hearts of His faithful people by the sending to them the light of His Holy Spirit;" and of the Wisdom of the perfect, when it prays God, that "by the same Spirit" we may "have a right judgment in all things."

In this context the movement of the Holy Spirit begins with Faith and is perfected in wisdom, or right judgement.

  knowledge itself, though a condition of the mind's enlargement, yet, whatever be its range, is not that very thing which enlarges it. Rather the foregoing instances show that this enlargement consists in the comparison of the subjects of knowledge one with another. We feel ourselves to be ranging freely, when we not only learn something, but when we also refer it to what we knew before. It is not the mere addition to our knowledge which is the enlargement, but the change of place, the movement onwards, of that moral centre, to which what we know and what we have been acquiring, the whole mass of our knowledge, as it were, gravitates. And therefore a philosophical cast of thought, or a comprehensive mind, or wisdom in conduct or policy, implies a connected view of the old with the new; an insight into the bearing and influence of each part upon every other; without which there is no whole, and could be no centre. It is the knowledge, not only of things, but of their mutual relations. It is organized, and therefore living knowledge.

Later on in the sermon, he describes how Faith (speaking generally) can reach the highest that Wisdom is capable of (naturally speaking):

Whatever be the subject-matter and the point in question, sacred or profane, Faith has a true view of it, and Wisdom can have no more; nor does it become truer because it is held in connexion with other opinions, or less true because it is not. And thus, since Faith is the characteristic of all Christians, a peasant may take the same view of human affairs in detail as a philosopher; and we are often perplexed whether to say that such persons are intellectually gifted or not. They have clear and distinct opinions; they know what they are saying; they have something to say about any subject; they do not confuse points of primary with those of secondary importance; {305} they never contradict themselves: on the other hand they are not aware that there is any thing extraordinary about their judgments; they do not connect any two judgments together; they do not recognize any common principles running through them; they forget the opinions they have expressed, together with the occasion; they cannot defend themselves; they are easily perplexed and silenced; and, if they set themselves to reason, they use arguments which appear to be faulty, as being but types and shadows of those which they really feel, and attempts to analyze that vast system of thought which is their life, but not their instrument.

 He distinguishes it here from Bigotry, which is like Faith often partially uneducated, but doesn't possess the habit of right judgment -- it misjudges, and over-extends partial truths, and puts things out of order.  Of course, in most actual people you find a mixture of traits -- there is hardly anyone free of bigotry, either rationalistic or fideistic, but you do find exemplars of Faith in the saints, whether they happened to be well educated, or not.

In this way, true Faith is perfected in Wisdom, not by human means but by grace.   I am supposing that false or warped faith always resolves into some kind of bigotry.  And I'm not just talking about professedly religious faith here, either, because, as Newman says, we can't do without some sort of dogmatism or principle, whether we happen to acknowledge it or not: 

Thus, what is invidiously called dogmatism and system, in one shape or other, in one degree or another, is, I may say, necessary to the human mind; we cannot reason, feel, or act, without it; it forms the stamina of thought, which, when it is removed, languishes, and droops. Sooner than dispense with principles, the mind will take them at the hand of others, will put up with such as are faulty or uncertain;—and thus much Wisdom, Bigotry, and Faith, have in common. Principle is the life of them all; but Wisdom is the application of adequate principles to the state of things as we find them, Bigotry is the application of inadequate or narrow principles, while Faith is the maintenance of principles, without caring to apply or adjust them..

and also

Even sceptics cannot proceed without elementary principles, though they would fain dispense with every yoke and bond.

Speaking of Reading Books

.....and about thoughts on 2011 and plans for 2012,  I thought of another couple of things I wanted to change this year. 

One was that I didn't really read very many devotional books when I look back on last year.  I read lots of books with a Christian perspective, and particularly I am glad I read so many Christian novels, but I didn't finish many classic books on Christian living.    Next year I'd like to read more of these, particularly rereads.

Another related thing -- I had no way to record reading that wasn't book or was only excerpted from books.   So when I, say, browsed through a book on my shelves and read for about an hour, but didn't read from cover to cover, I just didn't write it down, even if it was good quality reading.  

I stayed away from some reading I would have liked to do because I wasn't sure if I could commit to reading the whole thing cover to cover.   This sort of ties in with the lack of religious books recorded because sometimes I did start reading an excellent religious book -- I started reading CS Lewis's Christian Reflections, I reread some of ST Francis de Sales' God's Will For You, I read quite a lot of a biography on St Francis de Sales, I reread a good bit of Imitation of Christ, and I read parts of a compilation of St Thomas Aquinas.   But I didn't really know how to count this.  Should I count pages next year?   That sounds too difficult and quantity-oriented for something like reading.  What about when I read an article online?   Do any of you keep track of this kind of reading and if so, how?