“I am really good at focusing on just one thing, down to the smallest microcosm of thought. I can think one thing to death. That is my problem. I can get down to kindergarten level and identify completely with the young child-mind, and live there all day– but don’t ask me to talk about past participles or Plutarch. Or I can commiserate with the difficulty of third grade math, and rejoice to be learning the exploits of British kings– but then it is hard to be understanding of my kindergartner’s position when she begins doing whatever she can to get my attention after being by herself for an hour. Or I can attempt to understand Plato and Shakespeare and have a theoretical discussion on the virtues of socialization versus academic achievement (with my sixth grader), but if my 3rd grader approaches me wanting help with her basic division facts I have to “climb out of a pit” in order to remember how to explain it.”
This is a quote from a blog I just discovered from an incoming link, called CM, Children and Lots of Grace. Mother Auma wrote a couple of thoughtful posts about monastery bells and global thinking. … here and here. I put it the quote on here because it not only sums up how I function, so much so that I could have written it! but it also summed up what I have been thinking about how my life goes.
For example, this morning:
- I woke up and wrote a quick post about Chesterton for my discussion group and then a longer post for my other blog, trying to pull together some scattered thoughts about integrity. At the same time
I put offAidan, I mean multi-tasked. - Then I went downstairs and made oatmeal muffins, a little too late for breakfast! My excuse for this lateness and dilatoriness was that we drove 9 hours yesterday to pick up our oldest son at college, plus I had a cold.
- Then I got into a talk with Liam, my oldest, about Aristotle’s De Anima. He read me a section and a long discussion about substance, form, matter and quiddity resulted. Realization: I don’t know even more than I thought I didn’t know.
Then I played T-ball with Paddy, entering into his elaborately and dramatically played out fantasy world of baseball superstardom. That was when I had that sensation of changing gears that inspired this thought process.
Kevin called us up to watch a couple of funny You Tube videos about weathermen. Then Liam found a section from Life of Brian on YouTube that his Language tutor had showed them at college. Romanes eunt domus — it really is pretty funny. Then Kevin started looking up other funny Life of Brian clips. - Then I hung up some laundry on the loft rail (we still don’t have a dryer) and made a fire, then swept a bit, then hunted for Aidan’s sandals since Liam was taking him outside. Somewhere in there Clare and I had a discussion about the Novus Ordo mass and the coming liturgical changes.
- THe bed still isn’t made (because Kevin slept in, tired after all that driving). And I forgot the muffins until Sean said “What’s that smell?” Fortunately, it wasn’t the smell of charred ruins — he simply smelled the cinnamon and oatmeal baking. So the muffins were deeply brown rather than lightly golden but they still tasted just fine. Just so you know.
- There were also countless little details that would take more time to write than they did to live — Aidan trying to find a stick to put his stroller wheel onto, Kevin showing Liam the X Box and his digital camera, me putting laundry away and reminding the kids to do their “weeklies”, planning whether and how to make it to Mass for Holy Thursday tonight, watching Paddy and Aidan following Liam everywhere he went, and so on.
From the philosophical to the imaginary realm to the domestic to the liturgical domain, all in the space of three hours — and this is fairly typical of life around here. It is both my greatest delight and my greatest challenge. I know I will so miss these days of experiencing the whole range of human issues all condensed into a morning. But I think I might be able to carry it off more successfully if I had a half day or a day to focus on each area. I am not complaining. The glory of it outweighs any regret by far. I am just noting it, like a time capsule to the future — “Oh, that’s right, that is why you sometimes retreated to your computerand blogged just to get your thoughts back in a straight line; that’s why you were always behind in phone calls.”
At the same time, I know that this is not an excuse. There is a line between keeping a rhythm to the day that includes some respite times — which is fine — and ignoring my monastery bells, thereby ignoring that still small voice– which is not fine. I don’t always know where the line is; that’s why I need those down times, to hear that voice. But I often know when I’ve crossed over that line. I know when I’ve made myself psychically deaf to the bells. Aristotle says in the part of De Anima that Liam read to me:
Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name-it is no more a real eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure.
I have to keep my faculties attuned to what my role in life is right now, and let my strengths and even weaknesses be in the service of that vocation. I can’t become just a facsimile, a representation of what I am meant to be. Aristotle made a distinction between the sleeping eye — which is sometimes dormant but still doing what it is meant to do — and the blind eye — which is not doing what it is meant to do. That distinction can be difficult to discern in day to day life, but it is important.
It is often quoted, but Chesterton speaks well to this, so I will let him conclude:
To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. … a (mother’s) function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
PS Now that I’ve written this out it looks like it ought to go on my other blog, since it’s more of a philosophical ramble than a proper journal entry, but I’m leaving it here because I already wrote enough meanderings on there for today — I guess it must be spring ;-)
