I woke up early because I wanted to be able to write a post here. But, my children have this amazing ability to sense when an adult is alert and therefore, wake up to share their company. If it weren’t so annoying, this infallible instinct would be astounding.
I did finally manage to write an “introductions” post. I’m sure I will change it as time goes on, but for now, if you’d like to know a little more about me, it’s there. Next (when my children allow it) why did I call this blog “Emberings?”
Over the weekend, I finally finished a review of Fertile Ground: A Pilgrimage Through Pregnancy on the Homely Hours. This was one of my favorite books of 2019 and one I wholeheartedly recommend.
One thing that is so lovely about blogging is that my posts showing up on a blogfeed doesn’t depend on me posting more often. For me right now, super frequent (frenetic?) posting on any medium probably means that I’m not being very faithful in my family life.
To end this random assortment of thoughts, I thought I’d share this quotation from Wendell Berry that I have been reflecting on lately.
“Contemporaneity, in the sense of being ‘up with the times,’ is of no value. Wakefulness to experience — as well as to instruction and example — is another matter. What we call the modern world is not necessarily, and not often, the real world, and there is no virtue in being up to date in it. It is a false world, based upon economies and values and desires that are fantastical — a world in which millions of people have lost any idea of the materials, the disciplines, the restraints, and the work necessary to support human life, and have thus become dangerous to their own lives and to the possibility of life. The job now is to get back to that perennial and substantial world in which we really do live, in which the foundations of our life will be visible to us, and in which we can accept our responsibilities again within the conditions of necessity and mystery. In that world all wakeful and responsible people, dead, living, and unborn, are contemporaries. And that is the only contemporaneity worth having.”
Image: I love Carl Larsson. Also, the girl on the left looks just like my daughter.
Emberings 
I love the Wendell Berry quote and I will have to read it more closely. A couple(really 3:) thoughts: I agree with the not frenetic posting, I am thinking I will aim for once a week as that seems manageable. Also, congratulations on your pregnancy, how wonderful! Lastly, I am LOVING Middlemarch, how did I live so long without it, lol? And Father Stephen Freeman quoted from it (I think he used part of the same quote you told me about) in his very very apt post this week on being hidden. I think my next post will be about that. Okay, this was SO many more than 3 thoughts, so I will stop. Have a wonderful day and remainder of the week!
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I’m so glad that you are loving Middlemarch. I identify with Dorothea probably more than any character in fiction… Also, I read Fr. Stephen’s post and it reminded me of another Wendell Berry quote I’ve been thinking about that I think is apt in light of the “Hidden Life” movie (which, my husband went to see on Saturday — I’m waiting to just rent it because I didn’t feel like I could handle it right now): “History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”
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“In that world all wakeful and responsible people, dead, living, and unborn, are contemporaries. And that is the only contemporaneity worth having.”
No particularly deep thoughts as yet, but I just finished my first pass through the audiobook of _Abolition of Man_ (prioritized based on your Sacramentalists interview!) and this part of the quote jumped out at me as decidedly related. I completely agree that the … narcissistic? … focus of the modern world on its own span of existence, and its disdain for those who came before and will come after, is profoundly unhealthy.
“I woke up early because I wanted to be able to write a post here. But, my children have this amazing ability to sense when an adult is alert and therefore, wake up to share their company. If it weren’t so annoying, this infallible instinct would be astounding.”
All I have to say about this is “Argle-bargle-yeaaarrrgh!!”
It can get better, though; once both our boys got to >5yo, I started to be able to actually snatch some early AM time without waking them.
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Glad you’re”reading” Abolition of Man– so much in that book. Have you read the Space Trilogy? Also, my kids have decidedly gotten better. I normally wake up before them and get some time alone… It’s just funny how their wake up time seems to adjust based on when I wake up.
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Yeah, I’m definitely going to have to take it in at least one more time. We have it in one of our C.S. Lewis omnibuses; I’ll probably actually read-read it this time. I started the Space Trilogy last year, in the summer, I think; but only got partway through Perelandra before my library loan ran out and only just got around to requesting it again a couple of weeks ago. I restarted at Perelandra, and I’m only a few pages in so far this time around. Stay tuned!!
Kids must just be incredibly tuned in to small variations in the sounds of the house? So weird.
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That Wendell Berry quote is exactly how I have been trying to live my life. This puts words to the various thoughts and actions I have been thinking and taking. Thank you for sharing it! Note to self: read some Wendell Berry.
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Me too!
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