Discover more from The Commonplace
5 Quick Things #317 π
liturgically-oriented hammers, fine-enough housekeeping, good sex talk, & make haste slowly
Hey there,
Time has held very little meaning for me this week. I began with a flight home from Savannah, which always throws off a typical weekly routine when you begin with travel and move right into the rigamarole of life, but then I came down with a wildly weird flu, which was fever dream-like for about 48 hours yet left about as quickly as it came (Iβm perfectly fine now as of Friday morning). To add the cherry onto the βWhat is life?β daze and dizziness I endured typical of a flu, in the midst of it I was already scheduled to teach existentialism and absurdism to my senior-level literature class. Cβmon, kids, letβs unpack Camusβ The Stranger while I contemplate whether my hand in front of me is actually real! Itβll be fun.
All in all, I can laugh at the week because Iβm fine now (well, except for the bajillion things on my plate, which Iβm sure more than a few of you are nodding your heads in understanding, as tends to be the case this time of year). Iβm glad to be home, Iβm grateful for my own bed, and I canβt believe itβs already February. Usually January creeps by for me. Not this one.
5 Quick Things βοΈ
1. Earlier this week I shared with Commonplace subscribers some lessons learned from my recent writersβ weekend. The first bit is now free to the public, if youβd like to read a few takeaways. β¦No hard-hitting essay here, but Iβm grateful nonetheless for the simple beauty of time away.
2. I love what
βs been writing about lately regarding a renaissance coming upon us as a renewed desire for a healthy, hopeful theology of craft (spoiler alert: weβll be talking about this with Nate in the coming months on Drink!). His recent follow-up piece gets practical, listing several burgeoning institutions with this same vision of a trade school with sacramental soul (my youngest is already eager to go to St. Joseph the Worker). As he saysβwith these schools, βtaking up a hammer, letβs say, is an embodied act that demands the recruitment of the interior life such that what its face is applied to is ordered rightly: both to spec, making it technically good, and to Jesus, making it liturgically oriented.β3. Festina Lente is one of my go-to maxims in my education philosophy (in my classroom, for my own children, and even in my own): it means to βmake haste slowly.β
does an excellent job unpacking this foundational principle, and itβs worth contemplating because it applies to so much more of life than just in the classroom: βFestina lente does not merely focus on avoiding waste; it focuses on doing things well from the start, it focuses on mastering what is important in proper sequence. Think of the soldier training in combat, or the carpenter looking over the blueprint, or Aldus carefully comparing Greek manuscripts before printing the first Greek edition of the dialogues of Plato. Each must proceed in prudent sequence echoing another sister maxim: First things first.β4. I didnβt know I needed a think piece on the reasons why a good-enough approach to housekeeping might say something deeper about the modernization of our daily lives, but Iβm here for it, and
is up to the task: βIn taking care of our homes, molding them by daily care into the perfectly sanitized bubbles of magazine-cover perfection that we would like them to be, weβre playing at a kind of creation care that is entirely false. We are as deceived as the spiders who desperately try to move into the our nooks and crannies, mistaking our homes for the environment in which they were originally meant to dwell.β5. And finally, Christopher West answers ten questions about sex. Itβs probably not what you think, although this would indeed be a great conversation to have your adolescents watch for their ongoing educationβthis is solid food for thought for us decades-married adults, too. Really good and necessary topics, in my opinion. (Here it is in audio form, if thatβs easier for you.)
Currently Reading, Watching, Listening π
True Grit, by Charles Portis β the audiobook read by Donna Tartt is SO GOOD (her accents are *chefβs kiss*)
Quotable π¬
βNo man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the workβs sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.β
-C.S. Lewis
You need to get somewhere 1,000 miles away but you're in no hurry. What's your preferred method? π
I obviously asked this during a trip (at an airport during a layover, to be exact), but I do enjoy thinking about the details of a good journey. While all transportation methods have their place, I am SUCH a fan of good train travel and feel like the U.S. is bereft of a well-connected train system that would make our country so much better structured. I first encountered real train travel in my early twenties (I think I was 20, in fact) when I went to Europe solo for the first time. Trains made it so easy to get around! And theyβre so pleasant to take us from point A to point B (most of the time) β get a good seat, stare out the window, sip some tea, and get to journaling. Iβd travel everywhere by train if I could.
Also, Iβm sure all the current wild news in the airline industry isnβt helping us with our affection for flying right nowβ¦
Automobiles: 42.5%
Trains: 38.8%
Planes: 18.7%
Find this weekβs poll here.
Quick Links π
Question(s) For You to Ponderβ¦ π€
What would make your 16-year-old self proud to know about your life right now? (Take a quick moment for gratitude over that.)
Have a good weekend,
- Tsh
p.s. I love this refrigerator.
Subscribe to The Commonplace
Noticing what's still beautiful, good, and true in the world. Because it's thereβif you have the eyes to see.
Oh, 100% trains when in Europe! I really wish we had a better and more affordable train system here.