{pretty, happy, funny, real}

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Every Thursday, here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!

There are so many things on my mind.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we modern people can’t escape applying modern remedies to problems, even when the problems are modern ones to start with. So please forgive a little rumination with your {phfr} today.

I don’t mean modern in the sense of “technological.” Modern in the sense of separated from a sense of wholeness. I’ll call it a fatal anguish over the inability to connect with an authentic reference point outside of ourselves; often it’s anguish over the fact that others are experiencing this failure.

We can identify a lack of centeredness in our world, but our response is to try to convince ourselves and others of the importance of centeredness by means of plans and programs, our faith in which is rock solid — against experience! The more the programs increase our tension, the more we seem to have recourse to them. We have checklists for our checklists! We don’t notice that our precious plans drive people away.

When really, what we need to know is what Walter Bagehot advised: The way to keep old customs is to enjoy old customs.

That’s a laconic British way of packing a lot of wisdom into a little sentence.

Enjoyment is pretty hard to come by in our impatient, energetic times. To our sensibilities, enjoyment seems inimical to our serious and stressed way of approaching life. We suspect it. Seems wrong somehow. But…  give it a chance. The secret is in the part about “old customs.”

The oldest of all are the ones that relate to family life and to Liturgy, to worship. Begin with Sunday. Worship, celebration, rest. These are what will restore our spirits and bring the world back to its senses, with nary a program to explain it all. If you begin with Sunday, you will find that your whole week has a new meaning.

Live your Sunday! You will see how the world around you changes.

{pretty}

Picked the last of the zinnias before the frost… but didn’t get to the hydrangeas. Sigh. They were so pretty and now they are all brown.

{happy}

 

Of course he had to rub his white fur up against my fuzzy tights.

The honey is all harvested — that red box has the frames for the bees to clean, as described in the honey-harvest post by the Chief. (By the way, for contrast with this year’s late, dark honey, here are pictures of the capped honey frames from a harvest earlier in the season, five years ago. So different!)

{funny}

A vine that volunteered in the pepper bed turned out to be a single-fruited cantaloupe plant that missed the memo on timing (that is a cereal bowl there for scale):

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