Fire and Water

We had a fire day up here in the Sierras this Saturday.   First, at a memorial for an old church friend, we could hear fire sirens constantly, and the roar of giant fire planes.    Later on, at mass down in the foothills, the church was evacuated due to an entirely different fire.     The fire near our house was quickly controlled, but the one in the foothills has spread and is only partially contained.

Recently I read St Francis's Canticle, and noticed how the praise subtly shifts during the song from the unequivocal praises of natural things, to the blessings through tribulation.    Sister Water and Brother Fire are both praised in the canticle, towards the middle:

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.

These praises come towards the middle and in my reflections at least almost serve as a hinge.   Water and fire are lifegiving yet also dangerous; sometimes catastrophic.    There are so many things like that.

Apparently, according to the site I linked to, the thematic shifts of the canticle are associated with its composition, as the three different sections were composed at different times in the saint's life.    Even the praises of nature at the beginning, however, are associated with suffering, since Francis apparently composed them when he was undergoing the stigmata, and was reflecting upon how we humans mis-use the gifts we are given by God.

I hadn't noticed the connection until I started writing this, but of course, Pope Francis's exhortation Laudato Si begins with a reference to this very canticle.    The whole thing is in the vein of St Francis's praise/ lament.   We have been given such marvellous gifts.   If we value them the way they should be valued, perhaps we will be careful how we use them.

The friend whom we memorialized this weekend chose hymns for her service that reflected this love for natural things and trust in God who gave us these things:

• How Great Thou Art
• Prayer of St Francis
• Be Not Afraid
• Because He Lives

One of her grandsons said that she told him to be a "ten percenter".   She had a rather counter-cultural definition of the term -- she told him to leave everything 10 percent better than he found it, and backed it up by instilling in him a habit of bringing a trash bag with him to the lake or forest, so he could pick up the trash left by careless people.   He said that as a kid he thought it was unfair that he had to undo the damage done by other people, but as an adult he realizes that this is more than a habit, it is a way of living.   

I want to remember that about her, and try to live that way too.   In her life, stewardship and concern for others were closely linked, in a very practical and quotidian way.    If every Christian lived like her, I don't think the pope would have had to write his exhortation.   

Words from Reading

A lot of my reading in the past year or so has been free or inexpensive Kindle books, mostly mysteries.   I think perhaps I should start listing the ones I particularly like, but I haven't done it up till now.   Partly, I think I need a system.   Some indy books are promising but quirky; others are just not good; others are basically equivalent to an old-style printed and published book, but the authors just chose to go the indy route.

Anyway, recently I found a couple of interesting words in a couple of indy police procedurals.

1.  anorak

I knew an anorak was a kind of jacket.   Originally the word meant a hooded polar type jacket like a parka.  But when I went to a British high school in Switzerland, the kids called any weather-resistant jacket an anorak.

But recently, in British slang, the word can mean something like a nerd or geek.    In the book I read, a character said of another that she liked him though he was "a bit of an anorak."   At first I pictured someone like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, someone who wears a heavy jacket as a kind of protective barrier during school hours.   But I guess it refers to something more like the way my son AM collects photos of the things people put on the top racks of their SUVs.     You don't need to actually be equipped with an anorak to be a bit of one.

2.  tsundoku

Now here is a word that could be the subheading of my blog.    It's sort of a play on two Japanese words meaning "pile up" and "read".    It basically refers to the habit of bibliophiles of buying books and letting them pile up unread.  Illustration here.   Yep, useful word.

3.   faba

This one is here because 2 words doesn't seem like enough for a list.  It has very specific family context.   My almost 2 year old granddaughter calls little candies "beans".   This  started when I had some starburst jelly beans left over from Easter and would occasionally give her a couple as a treat.    She also has a compact Latin dictionary that she likes to carry around.   Her 13 year old uncle PG took to quizzing the family using the book (when she lets him have it : )).    He quizzed us on "faba" and she seized the book back and said with a magisterial gravity "faba -- BEAN".  

Talking babies are a great addition to any household, especially in adding new richness to common language, and I'm glad my youngest gets the chance to be around one of them.

Interstate Tesseract

And I was just getting up,
hit the road before it's light
Trying to catch an hour on the sun...

(Neil Young)

On Monday, my oldest sons and I drove up the interstate  towards their Oregon habitations, and yesterday I drove back to our California mountain home.  Interstate 5 has become archetypical in our family's life, like Mark Twain's Mississippi.   It has paragraphed major life changes -- the first time I drove down with my future husband to meet his family, which of course was not the first time he had travelled that road; the trips with small children, embarked upon late in the afternoon so they would sleep through the bulk of the 11 hour trip; the first time stopping to meet the Bryan family; the trips laden with spare houswares to set up my oldest's first apartment.

How odd to think about -- all those past selves, "lines in the field of time".     Still there, because how could things that once existed go away completely?

I picture a tesseract, as in Interstellar. ... a hyper-geometric figure of that long, slender, straw-colored corridor of traffic, unfolding to glimpses of those past moments.   I can't communicate with those former versions of family, driving along to their destinations in a Ford Pinto, or a Toyota Corona, or a Chevy Suburban, or a Nissan Quest, or a Dodge Durango, but they can communicate with me, in a way.   At least, they were present to me on this trip.

Maybe it was because we had recently had an extended family reunion, and it was like a time warp to see so many nieces and nephews grown and carrying on their adult lives.  It could have been because this particular family gathering went viral, literally, as one by one we came down with the norovirus.    Being sick for several days has a way of making time eddy strangely, as does travelling.   As do family reunions.

Anyway, for some reason, maybe because I was driving with only my two oldest sons and thus not as distracted as usual, I started blogging in my head, for the first time in forever.    I used to blog in my head often, but I rarely have done in the past couple of years.  Not sure why.  It wasn't a conscious decision.    It would go like this, at intervals of every few months:

--Self, do you have anything to blog about?
--Not really.
--Okay, then.

 But on this trip, the posts kept composing themselves.    I don't want to ignore them.

New Physics and Old Metaphysics, reprise

I tried to discuss Stephen Hawkings' book The Grand Design back here. I wasn't that thrilled with my post but wanted to get my thoughts out in writing.  I wrote

I do not know if the authors are making this assumption, but I have seen some scientistis and even some theologians assume that the word "God" is a way for people to explain physical mysteries.   So when there are no more physical mysteries, there is no more need for God. 

I have never quite understood that line of thinking, but apparently it came about in the Enlightenment, when philosophy took a post-Cartesian credibility hit and physical science came to the fore as a presumably more realistic substitute given the terms of the Cartesian approach.   Most of the scientists of the time were still Deists, though many of them weren't orthodox.   And the same was true of many theologians.  So God did begin to become for them a way to explain what couldn't be explained by empirical methods of the time.   In that approach, God became a component of our thinking, a kind of placeholder, so as our thinking became more scientific, the place for God  in our heads got smaller and smaller.  

 Well, over here is a lecture called The New Physics and the Old Metaphysics by Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., Ph.D.   He says it much more elegantly and Chestertonianly (: )) by saying that Hawkings was absolutely right, he did eliminate the need for God to explain the universe, and rightly so, because that kind of deist God, designed as an explanation for what can't be explained otherwise, needs to be done away with.

The real God, Consolmagno says (I can't past his words directly because of the format of the lecture text), the God of Abraham, is not bound within the cosmos.   Quoting Wittgenstein, he says, "the sense of the world must lie outside the world." 

This may sound a bit Kantian, but it does not have to be that way.  While Kant would say that God can't be known, Consolmagno says that God indeed can be known experientially.    We cannot "derive" God from analysis, but we CAN know Him; in fact, we know all things BY Him, whether we happen to know that or not. 

I'm not updating this blog regularly anymore but this doesn't quite seem to belong to Take Up and Read so I'm putting it here!

HT for the link to the talk:  Michael Baruzzini in the CatholicScience.com newsletter.  

Where the Moose Go

The moose have been hungry in Alaska this winter.  This doesn't have much to do with anything that follows in this post, but it does give me a chance to post this photo of my Mom's cute window hanger (and the moose-hungry-making winter landscape behind it) and also, when else am I ever going to get a chance to write a line like that with credibility?

 I am thinking of opening a novel with the line, though, "The moose were hungry that winter...."   Now I have a head start for next November's novel writing! 

Ever since the New Year I have been trying to figure out my plans for this blog.   In November I started a new blog and though that one hasn't quite hit its natural stride yet, it overlaps so much with this one that I don't really need to keep this one going.   In the past I have managed to keep two or more blogs alive at the same time, but recently I just haven't been keeping up that pace.   I used to think I was addicted, and maybe I was, but nowadays I almost have to make "blog every day" a Lenten resolution! (not quite a penance, because it IS after all something I enjoy and am by no means obligated to do).   Anyway, most of the posts I write on here can just as easily go on the other one. 

So I am thinking that  default posting will be on Take Up and Read.    We have lots of plans for that blog.  It is Catholic in emphasis as a quick look will show, but it is also about literary homeschooling and large family logistics and that sort of thing, and non-Catholics are very welcome.    Chari and I are both converts with many non-Catholic friends and family members.

As for the moose, I feel sort of sorry for them.   I see them lope past outside quite often.   I heard from Mom's neighbor that the deep snow really tires them out and also makes it hard for them to find food, so they have been gravitating towards roads and railroad tracks because it is easier to walk there.  But of course, that isn't a great survival strategy.    Come to think of it, that is a good Lenten parable.... I too often gravitate towards the wide easy road where engines of destruction can easily sweep me into their path and toss me aside.   

I am not planning to close down this blog -- I like to leave my old posts up so I can link to them in future -- and I may still post randomly when I want to draw attention to something -- but I just wanted you all to know where I had gone and what is going on.

A MOST BLESSED LENT AND EASTER TO YOU ALL!

Index of Planning Posts

I'm importing these from my older blog.

I'm trying to predate them so they don't show up on readers but if it doesn't work, sorry about that.  Blogger used to let me predate but apparently not so easily nowadays.  So this is just housekeeping!

2007 Planning Posts

• Beginning the Journey
• Map of the Terrain
• The Forest
• The Trees
• Setting Their Feet in a Spacious Place
• Miscellaneous Twigs and Branches (more planning posts)
• Considerations

2010 Planning Posts


Index of High School Posts
Focusing on the 4Rs
Reading Good Books
The 4Rs -- Writing
The 4Rs -- Writing cont
Less is More Planning

Kindle Book: The Life and Writings of Saint Augustine

I know I haven't blogged here for a while!  The little blogging I have been doing is over at Take Up and Read.

I am up at Wasilla visiting my mom and though I probably have more time in the day than I do at home, it somehow doesn't feel that way, so I have sort of gotten out of the blogging rhythm.

But I wanted to mention....

I found a good book for free for the Amazon Kindle (I'm guessing you can find it for the Nook, too).

It is The Life and Writings of Saint Augustine. 

It is a collection of some of his major works like Confessions, City of God, and On Christian Doctrine (and more as well, those are just the ones I can remember offhand) and there is also a section with some quotes of his.

Though the works are in public domain, this is an actual collection made by someone Wyatt North Publishing so there is a hyperlinked table of contents, and Kindle-specific formatting, which makes collections like this way more useable.  I don't know how long it will stay free, so I wanted to mention it!  

Poetic Knowledge Book Study Index

This is the index to my posts about Poetic Knowledge, with links to Mystie's posts which link to other posts by other readers.    I knew it would take a long time to compile it so I've been procrastinating!

Mystie has moved to a new location at The Convivial Home, but  her old domain at A Healer's Geste remains up for the next year, so the links still will work for quite a while. 

Chapter 1

"The poetic impulse to reflect what is already there" 

Chapter 2:

The universal embedded in the particular
 How Poetic Knowledge works

Chapter 3

Modes of Knowledge -- poetry is sane because it floats easily on an infinite sea
The Habit of Poetic Knowledge

Chapter 4

Descartes and His Legacy
The ascendancy of the materialistic view of man

Chapter 5

Aristotle quote
So that souls can bloom
The logic of crafts and gymnastics

Chapter 6

The unmaking of a dullard
Some links connected to the integrated humanities program
Rediscovery of their childhood


Chapter 7

some more links, and a list of books
a poem by John Senior:  the End of Education
the integration of an idea and a desire
 preparation for perception of the beautiful


Chapter 8

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy and art
Application:  not a checklist but a process

Keeping House Book Study: Wrap-Up

(vintage kitchen by janet hill)

I've very much enjoyed this study!  (follow the link for the index to all the posts, or else look at my sidebar)  I think the main take-away theme, that housekeeping is daily and both personal and social, but not for those reasons drudging, isolating or menial, was the main thing I want to remember.  Since reading this book, I've tried to look more carefully at the way I, and other people I visit, keep house and what that reflects about their lives and how they think of their responsibilities.

Just in case I have visited you or I ever do visit your house please don't worry that I am looking around with a gimlet eye at stains and clutter and dust bunnies or other possible "frays".   As Mrs Peterson says, we are all a little frayed.  That is why we need each other.

When I visit someone else's house I usually see that way more clearly than I do in my own house -- the love, care and bits of beauty that come out in ordinary flawed homes with ordinary traces of clutter and spills.    This helps me realize how the same things are shown in my home even though I'm often mildly discontented and frustrated with my own surroundings and my own limitations.

This book has helped me detach "care and love and work" from "immaculate perfection and constant striving for the unattainable."    Perhaps in that way it helps that the author is someone who genuinely loves keeping her house, even though she is a well educated  person who could probably have a very successful career.    Her love for the work involved in keeping the house, even while admitting it is repetitious and continual, helps me to see past my occasional "hamster in a wheel" feeling to how keeping house echoes the loving providence of our Father.

The Scripture references especially brought home to me how much God's providence is expressed in terms of nurturing, feeding, providing and preparing food, shelter, and clothing.  

I thought I would go into a part of the last chapter that I didn't really get to last week, and also tie into the subtitle of the book "Litany of Everyday Life". 

Ways that keeping house is like the sacred liturgy:

It is continuing and ongoing:

The routine never ends, though it is not like a wheel where you end up just where you began.   If it is like a wheel it is in the sense of the same elements constantly changing and moving you in the direction you want to go in. 

There are daily, weekly and seasonal changes in emphasis and practice.  

You do different things in the morning in your house than you do in the evening, and different things on Sunday than you do on Friday.  

Some seasons are busier than others.

You can't do everything all the time.   It seems best to focus on different things in different sections of the day, week, season or life.

It can seem overwhelming at first experience, but you move into it by participating.

The book uses the example of someone from a non-liturgical church visiting a more ritualized church for the first time.    I have had this experience since I grew up as an Evangelical and sometimes attended some Lutheran and Episcopalian services before becoming a Catholic.   Getting used to the rubrics took some time.  And certainly it was somewhat the same when I first had a baby, then several young children, then teenagers and babies both, then entered the world of special needs and medical fragility.   I have to say I often wished there was a missal to help me learn the new routines for every new phase of life.    But indeed, the main way to get used to the routine is to jump in and start following along responding to situations as they come up.  That is how a small child learns language and manners, and how to participate in Christian religious life.   Though there are no missals telling us how to be the keepers of our homes, there are certainly lots of books available to guide us and help us think more deeply and effectively about what we are doing.

Wrap-Up

Thanks everyone who got to the end of this study with me!  I enjoyed reading your thoughtful posts and comments.   If anyone stumbles across this in future and wants to comment, or if anyone is still finishing the book and wants to post or leave a link when you get to the relevant chapters,  please feel free.  

If you don't have your own thoughts to go into this week, I would love to hear where you are planning to go in your house-home related reading after this.    I know many of you try to keep going with a house-related improvement project almost all year around.

From PaperbackSwap  I got a book called The Family Manager Takes Charge which is completely different in tone and emphasis than Keeping House.    It takes the idea of the homemaker as manager of a small business concern and goes from there, including many, many practical ideas on how to make house management easier, more effective and more shared with other family members.   I usually don't get as much from the practical books as I do from the more musing sort, but I think it's a good time to try to upgrade my house management so I thought this one would work for a change of pace.

Sundry Links

Wildly varied collection of links I wanted to save/share:

Why you should come up with at least 1 bad idea today:

I spent some time working in the television industry, and I learned a technique that writers use. It’s called “the bad version.” When you feel that a plot solution exists, but you can’t yet imagine it, you describe instead a bad version that has no purpose other than stimulating the other writers to imagine a better version.

 Crocheting a Jersey Rug

I hate throwing away old stained and ragged T-shirts and this seems like a great way to repurpose.

100+ Free Kindle Books

Brandy at Afterthoughts bought a Kindle for her 9 year old and has shared titles and links to a bunch of free (public domain) Kindle books appropriate for that age!   Since I just bought a Kindle for my 9 year old, I went back to look at her list for extra ideas!

Epic improv by young viola player


You may have seen this already since it's gone viral.. What happens when an audience cell phone disrupts a young man's viola performance.

The Reader's Odyssey

A friend of mine recently authored and published this book and it is great to see it available on Amazon!  I got to read a pre-publication copy which I really enjoyed and hope to post a review soon.  From the book page at Amazon:

The Reader's Odyssey is a four-year literature program for homeschoolers that combines structure and flexibility to instill in students a propensity to engage in good and great books.  Emphasizing the value of classic works that have endured the test of time, this program's developmentally appropriate, "errorless" approach allows students to focus first on exploring many diverse literary works and only later on applying what they have learned to interpreting and evaluating literature for themselves.  The individualized aspect of the program allows fluent and reluctant readers alike to accumulate meaningful experiences with literature, to appreciate ideas that are beautiful and true, and to grow more sophisticated and wiser in understanding through reading. 

 The Rosary Army

This site has audio rosaries that you can put on your IPhone or MP3 player.   You can get either the kind that has a Scripture to introduce each decade, or the kind that has a verse for each Hail Mary.

The Common App

Since my son Sean is at the college application stage, he used this online Common App which lets you make an application that can be used for quite a few of the private colleges out there.

Giant Campus

Someone told me about this online high school level resource for taking various courses  related to computer programming, game design, business and engineering.   The spring classes are still open to enrollment.  I don't know much about it, but it sounds useful and interesting, and since the campus is leagued with several public schools I am assuming it is quite legit.

See you Monday when I will post the final Keeping House Book Club entry!  

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? 

Hollow Men

This is from The Hollow Universe, by Charles de Koninck, and reminds me a bit of CS Lewis's Abolition of Man which we were discussing this fall:

The prevailing 'scientific outlook', above all in the Commonwealth, is now more than ever dominated by Hume. His critique does not affect science as a tool; indeed, mathematics is now largely recognized for what he thought it was—a tool, and a quite reliable one. But his treatment of induction and causality is now being used to snuff out that first type of wonder : wonder about what a cause is, what is cause of what, what movement is, what place and time are, and so on. His apparently cold analysis has met with considerable popular success; and its effect is to drive from the human mind that primordial curiosity, the parent of all other motives of inquiry, which Aristotle describes in his account of the beginnings of science and wisdom.

Surely it is disheartening to reflect that we live in an age when it can be necessary, not merely to explain Einstein's speculative goal, but even to defend it against another type of mind which would have it that his time might have been better spent in the practice of plumbing. But the spirit of intellectual nihilism is gaining ground. It is frightening to think of the extent to which people are now being encouraged to banish from the minds of their children great questions as devoid of all meaning; to dispel the wonder which is a young mind's birthright; to confine their spirit to petty problems that can be answered once and for all to the satisfaction of reasoners incapable of raising a question to begin with. We now have a philosophy to show that there are no problems but those which it has shown to be no problem; and to decree that there is no philosophy other than one that is a denial of philosophy. Under the twinkle of a fading star, Hollow Men rejoice at a hollow world of their own making.

De Koninck was a Belgian Thomistic scholar who taught on the topic of "the compatibility and complementarity of philosophical knowledge and scientific inquiry".  Apparently the late Dr Ralph McInerny studied under him.   There are several writings of De Koninck's linked online at Good Catholic Books. 

Interesting factoid, if Wikipedia is to be believed:

De Koninck and his family hosted and entertained many notables in their Quebec City residence, among them Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his fiery writer-artist wife, Consuelo Suncín, during their five week stay in the province in the spring of 1942. The De Koninck's precocious eight year old son, Thomas, whom Saint-Exupéry met, may have served as an inspiration for the extraterrestrial visitor of his most famous novella, The Little Prince.

Keeping House Book Study: Chapter Five

(vintage kitchen by janet hill)

This is chapter 5 of the Keeping House Book Study, on Clothing a Household.   Like me, you probably are busy with your own household and not really focusing on book studies.   I almost decided to skip this week.   But I'm going to go ahead and get this out.   There will be no book study for next week due to Christmas.    I will pick up January 2nd unless it is just too crazy, in which case the next post will be January 9. 

In this chapter, Margaret Peterson compares the past with the present in this chapter on what it takes to clothe a household.    I'm going to follow that pattern and then comment on what I personally do in each category.  Please share any ideas or clothing hacks or insights you want to talk about, as well as the parts of the chapter that struck you most. Or just say Hi.  My standards are so very low for topicality during this holiday season.  

Providing Clothing 

In the old days, this meant taking up your needle and thread, or knitting needles perhaps, and building a wardrobe for your household.  Some households perhaps even spun and wove cloth starting from the original wool.    If the mistress of the household and her daughters didn't do this, perhaps their servants did.  Even when richer households went to a tailor or dressmaker, they didn't buy readymade clothing.  It was custom-made for them.  

Nowadays, generally woman buy rather than make clothing.  If they do sew or knit or crochet, they generally do it in a more creative than utilitarian spirit.    Clothing is inexpensive, ready-made, and ubiquitous in stores.  That means there are stores devoted completely to clothing and more where you can buy clothing along with other things.

My household == I have gradually become more conscious that most discount clothing is outsourced to countries where cheap labor is plentiful.  Sometimes I feel like we are like the early days of the Industrial Revolution where women and children slaved for starvation wages.    Plus, I don't much like cheap clothes and don't like spending the money on more expensive stuff.  Consequently, I almost always shop at thrift stores.... except for socks and underwear.

Our Drawers and Closets

In the old days, poor people might only have 2 or 3 outfits.  They made their clothes last through several incarnations..... they repaired, retrimmed or reworked their worn clothes, perhaps trimming them down for their children, or eventually tearing them up for rags.   I believe rich people often had far, far more even than we do nowadays, and it was often impractical clothing, fine flimsy silks that couldn't be passed on to the needy after wearing.

Nowadays, clothing is so abundant that we can easily end up with more than we ever wear.    Lots of people want to wear what's in style which means buying all new clothing (often marked up in price) and the right store name or brand name.

In my household -- Homeschooling seems to help somewhat with this, and so does being somewhat nerdy, because one tends not to care so much what one wears, as long as it's comfortable and decent.   I am not sure what people do if they or their kids really care about labels and that kind of thing.  I suppose I would have the kids spend their own money for status upgrades.  My daughter finds nice things in thrift stores and my sons generally develop some type of clothing convention -- my oldest son wears khakis and collared shirts and my other boys wear either casual/athletic or sometimes nicer pants and collared shirts or sweaters. 

Laundry

In the old days, laundry was backbreaking and labor intensive.   There was a reason why we "washed on Mondays" -- because we were well rested after the Sunday Sabbath.   Again, poorer folk did their own laundry or took in others' laundry; rich folk had it done by others.

Nowadays, everyone has a washer and dryer.   This hasn't made laundry exactly more manageable, but it is definitely easier to do.  And we do way more of it.     We wash our clothes after one or two wearings.

In my household, I sort of resist this imperative of continuous laundering, but it is difficult because boys really are hard on their clothes and adults and older teens usually don't want to put on already-worn clothes because hyper-cleanliness is sort of engrained in our culture.

Mending

In the old days, poor people valued every precious scrap of fabric, as I mentioned above, so they would repurpose again and again until the last rag was worn threadbare.

Nowadays, our clothing is so consumable.  We often aren't very aware of where it came from or where it goes after we tire of it and toss it in the trash or give it away.

In my household, I've tried to re-purpose torn clothes, but polyester doesn't work well for rags (just saying) and you never see kids wearing patched or repaired clothing any more.  Socks wear fast and they don't darn easily.    The fabric usually isn't the kind you can really use for quilts and the like.  



I've done different things through the years to deal with this --  I sometimes use old socks as dusters, for example.  And because we live in the mountains, and I have boys, I keep worn clothes for play clothes even after they are unacceptable for public wear.    I also convert trousers with holes in the knees into shorts.   And I keep the better casual clothes only for going out into company.


My own clothes are easier..  As long as I keep them in decent shape I can usually pass them back to the thrift store.  I usually buy simple tops and jeans and skirts that don't really follow the fashion so that they aren't obsolete by the time I hand them back in.    My problem is buying too much.  I really like sorting through thrift stores and finding new things.  I've gotten better about letting go of things I find I am not wearing. 

These last two parts are more about the natural rhythm of seasons, ages, and dealing with the daily flow of clothing, which probably hasn't changed quite so much as other things from past to present, because it's sort of inevitable that we will deal with these rhythms to some extent. 

Seasons and Ages

We all have our strategies for dealing with seasons and age changes.   I  rotate clothes in and out by seasons.   When we were having babies, we kept outgrown clothes for the next child.  Nowadays only two of my kids are still growing and they are quite close to the same size so I don't really have put-away clothes since the outgrown ones go right from Aidan to Paddy.

It's easy to keep way too many clothes between kids, though.  I used to keep almost everything, but finally realized that I only needed to keep a basic wardrobe in storage for the next kid.   The most important thing to keep is dressy clothes since they are more expensive to replace.  I have a couple of boxes devoted to boys' dress clothes, all white shirts and navy pants, for almost every size.   But now of course I can discard the ones that Paddy has outgrown since he is the youngest.

Putting Things Away

Mrs Peterson talks about the rhythm of sorting laundry before cleaning, folding or ironing laundry as it comes out, bringing out clothes by season or age, and putting things away after use or cleaning.    I have to admit that where I dislike most household maintenance jobs, I do really relish the rhythm of laundry and seasonal taking out and bringing in of clothes.

I used to get overwhelmed with it but I weeded out a lot of extras and what was left was way more manageable.  I think I like laundry because it feels and smells good, whereas most household maintenance involves slimy, disgusting, or harsh smelling things.   I love hanging up laundry to dry and bringing it in to fold it, but I only do this during the warmer months.   Once our dryer was broken for two years because we couldn't afford to replace or repair it, and I hardly missed it.   I hung the clothes up in the loft above the wood stove and they came down warm and dry and smelling so clean.

I am not very good at folding and don't spend a long time on mathematical precision, but I enjoy it.  I often get lost in thought while I'm doing it.  I wish everything in our Keeping House litany was as simple and gratifying for me.    I suppose it's true of any litany or oft-repeated prayer, that there will be some phrases that are particularly satisfying to say either because they just sound good or because they have some personal significance. 

Please share any random thoughts that occur to you.  Do you have any useful or creative strategies for dealing with our consumable, trendy,  too abundant clothing modern challenges with clothing? 

The Year of Books

2011 was definitely a Year of Book Reading for me.   Right now I am up at 175 books.   

So I definitely met the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. 

Because of the challenge, this is the first year I actually kept track of everything I read --- with the help of Goodreads.   

A few thoughts about that:

It was nice to really focus seriously on reading for a year.   In past years I probably simply couldn't have found the time.   Plus, in past years, I tried very hard to restrain my tendency to read voraciously.   I think even something good like reading can be disordered if it becomes too big a part of your life. 

On the other hand, I know that many people I really admire are great readers -- they have read widely and deeply.  There is no way around it:  that simply takes some time.  I couldn't do it when I had a special needs preschooler, a baby and five homeschool students of all ages.   But I have more time right now.  It may not last forever, but while it does, why not catch up on reading?  


I am especially proud of reading the books I had always wanted to read, like War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Consolations of Philosophy, Augustine's Confessions, and others of that sort, that are on Great Books lists everywhere.   Now at least I can say I've read them, and even learned from them. 

All in all, I think it worked out well to use 2011 as a sort of Book Sabbatical.  But I don't think I need to do that every year.  

Here are some thoughts on my Reading Challenge for 2012. 


Not Quite So Many Books.  Next year I probably won't push myself to read the equivalent of a book almost every other day, which is what 175 to 365 roughly comes out to.   

Books On My Shelves. I think I instead will try to focus more on reading or rereading the books on my shelves.  I know I have said that before.  But I really do want to.   If books are on my shelf, presumably it is for a reason --- so that they can be read.  If that is not happening, why are they there?  

Juvenile Books:  Most of the books on the kids' shelves, I have already read, but I probably will try to read the rest.   I found that when I was reading so much last year, I sometimes needed to read a lighter book after I had plodded through a more difficult one.   So in those cases I can read a juvenile book.    Now that my teenager and myself both have Kindles, I can read public domain juvenile books along with the ones for older folk. 

Rereading Books I think I will try to do a reread for every few new books I read.   In about a year I turn 50.  I think this age is a good time to read back through some of the most influential books in my life. 

Books that Changed the World.    My husband subscribed to Easton Press's Books that Changed the World.    So we have a shelf full of these handsome leather bound books that really want someone to read them.   I am not vowing to read them all, but I'm going to try to make a dent in them.  

Keep Track Of Books Read.  My father always kept track of the books he read and encouraged us to do the same.  I always tried, but rarely kept a consistent log.  This is the first year I really did record everything I read.   I would like to keep doing it.  

So there are my thoughts and plans.   Have you thought yet about what you are going to do about your reading in 2012?