Fortnightly Fragments #1
Doce de Leite, Elizabeth Goudge, visiting sons, reading & listening...
Each fortnight, I’ll be gathering fragments…‘slices of life,’ book notes & quotations, links to podcasts, music, etc.
This week, for the first time in 18 months, we had all of our children at our home. One son lives interstate and came down at the same time as another son was visiting from Germany where he’s now living and working. In the time he’s been away he’s travelled quite a bit through Europe and across to Brazil to meet his girlfriend’s family. He arrived here with a suitcase full of chocolate from Switzerland, Lebkuchen & other sweets from Germany, and presents for all his nieces & nephews, two of whom he met for the first time. He brought me a block of Doce de Leite from Brazil & it looks very much like Scottish tablet but isn’t quite as sweet. Which is just as well because when I was in Scotland in 2019, I was surprised to find that tablet was much sweeter than I remembered & I could almost feel my teeth disintegrating as I ate it.
I found a recipe for Doce de Leite (I don’t know how genuine this is! In the recipes I’ve seen, the Doce de Leite looks softer & spreadable but what my son gave me was the consistency of tablet.)
This morning I was chatting to my son in our lounge room/music room/library while he was looking through our books and remembering those that he liked best and couldn’t take overseas with him. While living and travelling overseas, he’s missed having books as ‘furnishing’ & ‘ornaments.’ I’d just been reading a passage in Elizabeth Goudge’s children’s novel, The Little White Horse (1946) that mentioned this:
There was an oak table in the middle of the room spread with a white cloth and red-and-white breakfast china, and there was a settle by the fire and a couple of hard oak chairs, but no other furniture and no pictures or ornaments. But the room did not need them because of the books, which stood there upon the shelves breathing out a friendliness that seemed to furnish and ornament the room, as did its spotless neatness and cleanliness. Maria had no doubt that the loving usage that had turned the books into living creatures was Old Parson’s…
Books are not just ornaments & furnishings, although they do that beautifully, but they are living when loved and used.
I’ve had some success with taking cuttings from different plants, but it’s taken me some time to actually grow a hydrangea and see it flower. The cuttings I took seemed to do well but then they looked like they’d died. Sometime later I saw some buds and leaves & now they’re flowering.
‘‘Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world…You might think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.’’
- The Little White Horse
Nature Notes
We’ve had three echidnas visit in the past two months - we might be lucky to sight one in the bush every two years, but we’ve had them right out in the open. One waddled outside past our kitchen window the other week.
A large goanna (lace monitor) - we don’t usually see them very often either but one turned up when our grandchildren were over on the weekend so that was a bit of excitement for them.
Listening to Arrival - this Advent song has some of the most poetic lyrics I’ve seen in a modern-day composition:
Podcasts
The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God - a long-form documentary podcast presented by Justin Brierley that tells the story of why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again.
Featuring interviews with secular and Christian thinkers including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Paul Kingsnorth, Louise Perry, Alex O’Connor & Tom Holland, this is an excellent series. I listened to Episode 22 today where Elizabeth Oldfield talked about what gives us the strength of formation we need to resist the stories that are always shaping us towards our worst selves: ‘…rituals, communities and practices being modes of attention. They shape us. The way you pay attention changes what you are able to see. Ritualised, communal, emotional, embodied forms of practice make it easier for you to see what’s really there.’
TRIGGERnometry - at the end of these podcasts the person interviewed is asked ‘‘What’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we should be?’’ It’s a good question. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own little chambers that we’re all talking about the same things. The man interviewed in this podcast, Adam Carolla, said ‘‘We’re not talking about mental health in a way that we should be talking about it.’’
Do mundane things
A few months ago I read The Natural Health Service by Isabel Hardman after it was discussed briefly in a conversation between Louise Perry and Freya India where they talked about the glamorisation, among young women especially, of SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) which are the type of antidepressant prescribed most often. In 2016 Hardman’s mind ‘'stopped working’ as she fell prey to severe depression and anxiety. In this book she examines the role that wildlife, exercise, community and the great outdoors can play in helping anyone cope with mental illness. Hardman, a political journalist, went through all the standard treatments but found that what helped her the most were the simple, traditional ‘prescriptions’ e.g. running, birdwatching, gardening & cold-water swimming.
‘‘Grief is natural, paranoid delusions are not.’’ Depression due to grief is a natural response. I didn’t realise at the time, but depression was the response to the grief that I felt when my brother died suddenly. I just felt a kind of numbness and it seemed that I didn’t care about things for a while. One evening I went to our church music practice, reluctantly. There were a lot of young women in their late teens, early twenties there and I just didn’t feel like listening to (what I considered to be) their frivolous conversations before we got into the practice. During the singing I felt a bit teary & the next thing I knew was enveloped in a huge hug by one of the younger women. I just lost it completely & cried and cried for the first time since my brother’s death. The singing just kept on, waiting for me to get over myself while this large girl hugged me and sang over me. We need Community. It’s not always comfortable but it’s so important.
Reading
Dominion by Tom Holland
Book of Jeremiah - Old Testament
The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge
Listening
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Some Advent ideas I’ve written about over the years - books for Mother Culture, family read alouds, music, poetry & art.
P.S. I’ve added a PDF of my previous post that listed our family read alouds over 30+ years.
Your writing is the best (and almost only) reading I do online. I prefer the old-fashioned way, but when I read yours, I feel thankful for technology. :) Thank you so much for all you share!!
Thank you, Carol. I find your writing a gentle, supportive balm in the movement of life.