Something Beautiful

Archbishop Romero

A few words of wisdom from Archbishop Romero, one of my heroes:

We live very much outside ourselves. Few people really enter inside themselves, and for this reason, there are so many problems. In the heart of each person there is a small, intimate place [a monk's cell], where God comes down to converse alone with people. That is where each person decides his or her own destiny, his or her own role in the world.

If each of us who have so many problems, in this moment, would enter into this small cell, and from there, listen to the voice of the Lord, that speaks to us in our own conscience, how much could each of us do to improve the environment, the society, the family in which we live. (Archbishop Oscar Romero, homily of July 10, 1977)

Activity

“How much you move affects your strength, your power, your balance, how you look, how you think, how well you withstand the high winds and rain showers of life and how long you will stand. Everyone needs concentrated doses of several kinds of movement to remain functional.” – Eric Heiden

Bonvin

I've mentioned in the past how much I like the Minneapolis Institute of Arts site, especially the Drawings and Prints Department.

While browsing there last night, I found myself looking at its drawings done largely in chalk. On page 2 I happened upon Seated Boy Holding a Cat, c. 1875, by François Bonvin, which I thought somehow quite affecting.

From there I found a brief biographical sketch of Bonvin and a list of his works online.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of works available. Ten of them can be seen at the Cleveland Museum of Art site. I especially liked these two:

A Nun Seated at a Table Knitting, 1862 (gouache and watercolor)

Country Street in Alouette, 1861 (etching)

Order

Years ago I came across this quotation by philosopher Edmund Burke:  "Order is the foundation of all good things."    Now, in reading about how to put together a personal Rule of Life, I find that order is an important, even a foundational, component of the life one is trying to establish through such a Rule. 

It's not entirely a coincidence that I'm also re-reading the novel Shadows on the Rock, by Willa Cather.   The main characters are a French apothecary and his daughter, inhabitants of the city of Quebec in 1698 and the years following.   The apothecary's wife had died some years earlier but the influence of her beliefs and actions lives on in the civilized nature of their lives. 

Before her death, Madame Auclair had instructed her young daughter in how to run a French household.   She had explained: 

. . . you will perhaps find it fatiguing to do all these things alone, over and over.  But in time you will come to love your duties, as I do.  You will see that your father's whole happiness depends on order and regularity, and you will come to feel a pride in it.  . . .  At home, in France, we have learned to do all these things in the best way, and we are conscientious, and that is why are called the most civilized people in Europe and other nations envy us.

Madame Auclair realizes that she will not live much longer, and she worries whether her young daughter will be able to preserve the heritage she had brought with her to the New World:

. . . something so precious, so intangible; a feeling about life that had come down to her through so many centuries and that she had brought with her across the wastes of obliterating, brutal ocean.  . . .  She wanted to believe that . . . life would go on almost unchanged in this room with its dear (and, to her, beautiful) objects; that the proprieties would be observed, all the little shades of feeling which make the common fine. 

Cather continues:

The individuality, the character, of M. Auclair's house, though it appeared to be made up of wood and cloth and glass and a little silver, was really made of very fine moral qualities in two women . . . .  

She relates that, as a result, the townspeople were "glad of any excuse to stop at the apothecary's shop." 

Much later in the book, the young daughter has occasion to stay overnight with a family in which these traditions are not observed.  When she returns home, she rejoices in all that she finds there --

These coppers, big and little, these brooms and clouts and brushes, were tools; and with them one made, not shoes or cabinet-work, but life itself. 

Cather winds up with this marvelous sentence: 

One made a climate within a climate; one made the days, -- the complexion, the special flavour, the special happiness of each day as it passed; one made life. 

Shadows on the Rock is a quiet book.  Nothing particularly dramatic occurs in its pages.  It is, however, something of a celebration of one kind of beautiful life.  I recommend it.  (Actually, I recommend just about anything by Willa Cather.)  

 

 

 

I'm struggling again today with a fair amount of pain.   At another blog I see an entry titled "The Plans I Have for You."   And immediately my mind goes back to two of my favorite Biblical quotations, which I have quoted in this space before.  

The first has nothing to do with plans, but is a might reminder of Good Things:

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

And then this reference to plans, which I somehow find so reassuring (despite my unbelief):   

For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

 

Books on Rules (of life)

I've continued to ponder and read about personal Rules of Life. On Tuesday I ordered these three books and they have already arrived at my local post office:

At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us, by Margaret Guenther

Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to the Well-Ordered Way, by Stephen Macchia

A Mother's Rule of Life: How to Bring Order to Your Home and Peace to Your Soul, by Holly Pierlot

I continue to be perplexed by (a) my own deep wish for a personal Rule for my own life; and (b) my resistance to the very idea as soon as I attempt to put any actual rule (however small) in place. What gives?

The problem might lie in my own refusal to acknowledge my actual deepest desires.  If a Rule is not authentic to the given person, it cannot succeed.   It might be that, in my attempts to craft a Rule for myself, I am trying to use the Rule to force myself into becoming someone other than who I actually am.  I suspect that many people turn to the idea of a Rule for this very reason -- because they do not like, and do not accept, who they actually are and want to try, yet again, to become someone else.  

In any event, my eye and spirit have been very much drawn to these words of Holly Pierlot, author of the third book above:  

When Mother Teresa began writing her Rule, she didn’t begin with the schedule. Instead she began writing out the “principles and spiritual goals” that defined the mission of the Missionary of Charity.

Okay, so it seems that we should focus, from the outset, on our "principles and spiritual goals."  

We need to be honest about those, however.   For some reason, that can be difficult.    (Why?) 

Anyway, my hope is to read these three books, use them and report on them!  

- - - - -

Note:  A substantial excerpt from Holly Pierlot's book is available for download at the Sophia Institute site. 

 

Happy August

Today is August 1st and thus marks the beginning of our last month of summer. In honor of this occasion, here is a leaf from the so-called Hours of Henry VIII, illuminated by distinguished French artist Jean Poyer. The miniature shows the harvested sheaves of wheat being brought in by ox-cart, while men work away at threshing the wheat within the barn.