Saturday, June 27, 2009

quince jam

Sometimes the simplest things cut right down, really stir you to the quick.

"He was primarily a country gentleman. That was why he had been made the Abbot here. It was his duty to restore the estate of the Patriarchate to order and productivity, so that the Christians of Petch might see how their God wished them to live in fair weather... In this he was succeeding admirably, for the monastary had that look of agrarian piety to be seen in many French and some English farms and market gardens...

He took us up to his parlour, which was sweet and clean, and we drank good coffee and ate crystalline spoonfuls of quince jam, while he talked of his work and the place."

-Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon


I think that only West could make something moral out of good coffee and quince jam. What an oddly lovely line.

I have been thinking often of the value of a graceful, tidy, simple home. Am I nesting, as people love to tease? Perhaps. There will always be a hundred ways to snidely put women back in their place. But here we see the same impulse in a monastery, the province of men - the care, the respect - the humility, even. A clean space. A meal that affirms the goodness of food, the magic of it. The closeness of nature.

I spent the evening tidying our place and now am basking in the fresh cleanliness, so perhaps that's why I'm touched by this tonight... I think sometimes that more people are influenced, healed and soothed by a clean home than by a great philosophy.

There's more to it than that, of course. In the best of tidy homes, one senses the presence of a guiding hand. Of a firm, but sensitive discipline behind the pruned plants, the woven mats and the freshly swept tiles. One understands that all surrounding, there is a caretaker - and more, a creator. One sinks into the feeling.

The food comes, made with love and simplicity, and it is thoroughly itself. No strange alien hand has churned it through a great machine. The sun that strikes is real sunlight. It has been filtered through the washed windows.

This is safety - and order, and visual peace. One can work, can function; can simply be. This, one thinks, hardly knowing why, is what it means to be human. Abundance without excess; grace through order. Everything, as the song goes, in its right place.

--

Of course there are the other spaces also.

What a tremendous clutter there was backstage, I remember. Costumes crammed against the walls. A table piled with props. Our card game under the table, where we'd hide and play while waiting for our entrances.

And the dust! It crept along the edges of everywhere. Summer crawled in the windows from the dusty parking lot and settled in every cranny. Behind the seats, it swept itself together into a soft grey fog against the planks. Before shows, the young ushers assiduously banged their brooms across the floor and scrubbed the bathrooms. That helped a little.

Yet the theater too had its own variety of order. Clutter, yes. But each costume had its place, every prop a taped off square of the table. What a surfeit of art, of the most joyously extravagant and garish sort. "To silence enthusiasm - at any moment - is absolutely wrong," wrote Sri Chinmoy.

We cared for our space, and we were made to care. We took a great responsibility for what those wooden floorboards gave us, for the way the rafters sustained us. In all of those outpourings there was discipline.

--

Creation and responsibility seem to me to be closely linked. One subjects oneself to the object of creation. One takes on a responsibility for doing it properly, thoroughly, neatly, with attention to detail, without sloppiness. For that thing, one does what ought to be done.

And then that thing takes on a highness, and reaches down, and carries you with it, because you have knelt down to it, and given yourself over to it; because you have washed the bathrooms and become dirty with sawdust and dishsoap. You have raised it above yourself. But it is faithful to you.

So the flowers grow and the driveway shines, and visitors come in, and eat quince jam crystalline with sugar. And they look about themselves and smile, and feel happy, and hardly know why. And it has nothing and everything to do with you.

1 comment:

Jason Means said...

Naila - as always, beautiful writings. I'm am encouraged, and inspired. Recent days and weeks have dampened my normal levels of enthusiasm, so much so that I have forgotten the simple pleasures and satisfaction of a tidy home. Thank you.