Finished reading: Angels in the Cellar: Notes from a French Vineyard by Peter Hahn. I cannot recommend this beautiful book highly enough. Every page was a joy to read. Special thanks to @JohnBrady for sending it to me.
The Householder
There is wisdom, even kindness, in concepts like “householder” and “laity.” Broadly speaking, these ideas represent an understanding that the capacities of someone devoted full-time to spiritual practice are very different from the capacities of someone with family and “worldly” responsibilities. I say there is kindness in these concepts; someone could just as easily see it as a spiritual caste system. That absolutely can be the case! Here, though, I want to emphasize the wisdom of these concepts in a time when they seem to have been forgotten.
If I had to, I think I could go the rest of my life with a boxed set of Fraiser, Lord of the Rings, and the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. 🎬
About to head out on a day trip full of visits to sacred sites and tending to the dead in family graveyards. The midpoint of the trip will be the Christ of the Ohio statue, which not enough people know about.
An aphorism is a pithy observation that contains a general truth. Aphoristic words condense a complex idea into a brief, exact, memorable form.
Aphorism doesn’t build a case; it flashes. Shining for a moment, it either lands or it doesn’t.
An aphorism is both too little and too much—too little to be explanatory, too much to dismiss.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” —Rumi
Sometimes an aphorism enacts an insight rather than describing one—a linguistic event rather than a proposition.
“Every word is a stain upon the silence.” —Emil Cioran
Sometimes an aphorism asserts an entire worldview in four words—leaving no room for escape or elaboration.
“Hell is other people.” —Jean-Paul Sartre
Today was our annual trip to Huber’s to pick a pumpkin for this year’s jack-o’-lantern. Beautiful, fun day. A lot of road construction, though, which added over an hour to the driving. Now we get comfortable and watch some Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Peter Hahn, Angels in the Cellar:
Before I settled on the vineyard, my life was intensely cerebral, sometimes physical, but tremendously lacking in the sensual. These days, however, I’ll find myself unconsciously bringing any number of things up to my tongue to taste or to my nose for a whiff. Walking through a forest, I’ll pull a few pine needles or leaves from a tree, roll them between my palms, and smell. I’ll pick up a handful of soil and do the same. At the farmer' market, as I go down the stalls selecting my fruit and vegetables, I’ll inevitably and discreetly lift one of each to my nose before filling my basket. Not only will doing this reveal something to me about the ripeness of the fruit or flavour of the vegetables but it also just makes the whole experience of food shopping richer. And while I have always enjoyed food as more than just fuel, it has now become a keen pleasure.
Consciously engaging my senses is something I need to be doing more.
Rachel and I went out on our first date thirty years ago today! It’s for this reason—and all the subsequent fall family fun resulting from that day—that October has always been special for us.
We also put up our Halloween lights today
Backyard fire on this Sunday evening.
