Moving Mountains - Fr. Stephen Freeman
Our Godless Era is Dead - Paul Kingsnorth
Simple Acts of Sanity - A Seed Catalogue - Ruth Gaskovski and Peco
This were to be new-made when thou art old - Mary Harrington
Five thought-provoking articles I read lately: five points of view that I’m thinking about as I consider 2024.
There are plenty of other interesting articles I could have showcased here of course, but these have stuck with me in part because I read them in this festive, but also restive, dark but also bright time of year. The Christmas meals and gift exchanges have come and gone, and now here I am with the gift of time.
It’s interesting to compare how I imagine this time of leisure will feel, versus how it actually feels. I imagine time without work schedules and activities will feel relaxing and peaceful, like putting down a heavy backpack and taking a long stretch. In reality, the absence of schedules and activities means unforeseen preoccupations bubble up. I have trouble sleeping. Anxiety suddenly attaches itself to…..almost anything. My body aches for no understandable reason. Until I learn to set a goal for each day, accomplish something myself and with the kids, it’s truly not very enjoyable at all. I have learned (but somehow also have to constantly re-learn) that every day needs to have some kind of a plot: a beginning, middle and end, and some sort of challenge or goal.
Anyway, I will challenge myself to pull a quote out of each article and link it to a thought or intention for the year. I haven’t thought a great deal about this, so I’m likely to surprise myself. I’m going to publish this before it is complete, because then it’s easy to use my own links, and because I think it’s okay if it’s a work in progress.
A “traditioned” life is not a static existence. Instead, it is something of a co-existence. The givenness of life is allowed. The mountains get a vote (or even a veto). There are many “mountains” in our lives – it is an ever-present feature of a material existence. Our planet is “traditioned” in a very unique position. That position (and much else that has been given us) make life possible. Very slight changes to that position would make life (certainly human life) impossible. At some point in our future, the ravages of an ice age will return (and there will be nothing we can do about it). —Fr. Stephen Freeman
My environment is full of the same kind of reminders that Fr. Freeman’s is. I am a fairly short drive away from the mountains, from wild areas that while not unmarked by people, are much more wild than civilized. But I also live in a city with many places that aren’t built to a human walking scale. So I’ve always been aware of this tension from my earliest years. My overriding feeling returning to a city as a child was that I was moving from something real to something less real. As I got older I learned to also appreciate the beautiful things that people can create, especially by participating in something social. So that made the city more “real” to me.
But I still have a frequent desire to visit places where the schemes of humans are, if not completely absent (I’m not a wilderness survivalist!) then at least more humble. So for the new year, find ways to live with things how they are, not try to change them to fit a whim.
...if God thinks and feels and speaks—if God has something like a ‘mind’—then maybe to be fully human means exercising our own mental functions, and not enfeebling them through excessive device use. Or, if God is face-to-face relationship as a Trinity, then our real center is not within us, but within the other—in our real relationships. And if God made the earth, plants, and animals, then maybe being human means staying physically close to these things.All that might sound very basic, yet in all these areas—mind, relationship, nature, embodiment—the ‘Machine’ competes against God, by framing every part of reality as a biological mechanism or a simulation, to be manipulated according to our caprice. I think this is where the real battle is—a battle to answer the question, “What is reality?”But this is not a question for Christians alone. It matters to all of us, and I think we need to wrestle with it in our families, our schools, even in our politics. We’ll come up with varying answers, but what matters is that we’re left with a robust moral awareness of the dark side of technology. Without that, the only thing left to wake us up will be suffering. --Peco Gaskovski
I would like to keep this question in my mind for the next year: "What is reality?" and "What does it mean to be human?" As I've noted before, questions tend to stick in my mind most effectively. I don't know all the answers to these questions, but I think they are good for framing decisions and conversations.
...if commitment comes with risks, the price of trying to avoid those risks is higher still. Committing to family life may be to risk abandonment. But the manosphere, and it female mirror-image ideology of Sex and the City liberal feminism, is a sterile, futile war not just on emotional risk but the inevitabilities that stand behind that risk: time, ageing, and death. The advice offered by these ideologies is far worse than risk-taking: to eschew all the long-term commitments that make life meaningful, in case the sight of your partner ageing normally reminds you of the passage of time. Grow old anyway, and leave no legacy of love to nourish the next generation. --Mary Harrington
This paragraph probably sums up the truth I would most like to pass on to my daughters. So many contemporary popular fictions (aka politics, belief systems, ideologies) have an unspoken assumption: namely, that one can (and should) live forever the way that one (might) live in one's twenties. From one perspective, this might look like personal autonomy, or even eternal youth. But it is a terribly brittle mindset, implying that the only good things in life are the things we choose and the things we control. Change and loss come for all of us, however. Things we cannot control, both welcome and unwelcome, happen to all of us. Just based on my experience, however, the things we do not control are sometimes the very things we need. It seems to me that the sane way to live is invest some time in figuring out what and who is important, stick with it/them, and not try to bulldoze every mountain that stands in the way.
A feast without a fast is a strange, half-finished thing: this is something I’ve only learned recently. We are coming up to the greatest annual feast of all, the one that most people, whether Christian or not, are going to end up celebrating. I’ve celebrated Christmas all my life, mostly with no religious trappings, and I’ve always loved it — more so since I became a father. But Christmas, in historical terms, is only one of a number of great feasts that make up the Christian ritual year, which was once — and still is in those parts of the world which continue to take it seriously — studded with saints days, festivals, processions, and feasts. --Paul Kingsnorth
There are so may paragraphs in Paul's essay I could have showcased. But I chose this one because the fast/feast rhythm is something I've been thinking about the past while. I observe how important holidays are when I see how my children feel about them. Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, birthdays: as soon as one holiday come to an end, they start looking toward the next one and talking about how to prepare for it. Of course they look forward to treats/gifts associated with these holidays, but that's not the only thing: holidays structure their year, as do things like the school calendar now that they are in school, and the various performances and festivals that they participate in through their dance program. I also observe the importance of making holidays about something more than just treats and gifts. If the focus is only on gifts, they get increasingly dissatisfied with them. After all, once the gift is opened, the mystery is over....and maybe it's a let down. So, I find myself trying to re-ritualize. This year, before they opened Advent goodies, I asked the girls to tell me one thing they were grateful for. Once they go used to this routine, they really enjoyed this. And it also seemed to help them appreciate the small gift they received, rather than complaining about it or immediately moving on to the next shiny anticipate things (which has a tendency to happen).
This is a long way from a fast, admittedly, but I think it's a step in that direction: bringing some mindfulness to the moment in a small way. I would like to keep looking for ways to do this in the new year.
My last featured article is Ruth and Peco Gaskovski's list of anachronistic practices compiled from an informal survey of their readers. They categorized them as follows:
- Technology use (reducing, altering, removing, replacing)
- Self-sufficient, minimalist practices
- Embodied & mental practices
- Children and family
- Spiritual and relational practices
I enjoyed reading (and contributing) to the list because it is a reminder that we do have choices in how we interact with each other and with, or without, technology. There are a few of the listed practices I already do, most of the time or some of the time. Perhaps there are some I would like to try or try more often. I don't know. It's not a proscriptive list; rather it's again about bringing mindfulness to daily routines, and asking that question "What is reality?" I find it interesting as a reminder that, oh yes, there are people who think about these things and people who have found these practices helpful. Any sort of intention has to be grounded in reality, in the things that we do.
So that's where I'm at. This isn't a list of "resolutions". It's more an effort to name the kind of music I am listening for as I walk through the market, or the meadow, or wherever I am at the moment. I guess one thing I can admit is I don't feel clever enough to decide on or specify exactly what I think would make my life better. It's pretty good as it is, with more than enough daily triumphs and challenges to keep me busy, way more than I can write about here. Also I'm never in the mood to create a long to-do list in January, which still feels like hibernation time.
But change and new growth often begins quietly, subtly, privately and that suits this time of year. I look forward to "growing" these ideas this year.
Completed between December 28th 2023 and January 6th, 2024
