The Law the Lawyers Know About
The law the lawyers know about
Is property and land;
But why the leaves are on the trees,
And why the wind disturbs the seas,
Why honey is the food of bees,
Why horses have such tender knees,
Why winters come and rivers freeze,
Why Faith is more than what one sees,
And Hope survives the worst disease,
And Charity is more than these,
They do not understand.
–H.D.C. Pepler
Every two or three days I try to cut all of the flowers off my sweet pea vines. I have to stretch way up now to reach the top ones, because they are seven feet tall and still growing.
Since the weather turned hot the stems have shortened and I need something like this half-pint milk jar to put them in. I found it earlier this month in a Carson City antique store when Mrs. C. and I were browsing there. Now I wish I’d bought several more.
I’ve been scrounging around my cupboards and in the garage to find jars, so that I can take bouquets to friends – so far everyone has been welcoming of their bouquets, but I know that the heavy scent is too much for some people.
My vines are very messy compared to the sweet pea rows Pippin and I saw at Chartwell in Kent, Winston Churchill’s country house. I was quite impressed to see such a wealth of sweet peas so meticulously trained and cared for. The English are famously devoted gardeners, aren’t they?
Last night Mr. Glad and I watched the movie “The Last September,” about the English in Cork, Ireland about 1920, and in one scene I was excited to see a bouquet of sweet peas on a table. They looked very like mine!
To get a good crop of sweet peas in our area, we have to start them in October. If we wait until Spring, the weather heats up too soon and cuts your pea season short. This is the case with edible peas, too. That white board is what I use to stand on when I’m picking so that I don’t sink in the mud.
These are the packets I bought last Fall, but I didn’t get around to using the two dwarf packets, which I had planned to put into pots.
And for the sake of history, a picture of what I think was the last time I made the effort, already seven years ago, in almost the same place, against the previous fence.
Sweet Peas make me so happy, I’m already planning
for more seeds and a longer patch of vines for next year.
This short piece from the Touchstone journal compares the perspectives and lifestyles of pagans, early Christians, and feminists regarding home and virtue — and disconnections that rob us of our full humanity.
Home Remodeling by Peter Leithart
In the ancient world, household and city were confined to opposite corners. The inner space of the household was for women and children, while the open space of the city was for men. Men gained honor and displayed their prowess in the forum and on the battlefield, places where only men could go. Alasdair MacIntyre has pointed out that virtue for Homer was military prowess, and the etymological connection between the Latin “vir” (man) and “virtus” (virtue) is no accident.
English theologian John Milbank has argued that the social revolution of Christianity broke down this distinction. The church is both household and city, Christians both brothers and fellow citizens. As the gospel penetrated late antique culture, the household itself, along with its work and its child-rearing, was increasingly valorized, producing what to ancient paganism would have been the oxymoron of the “virtuous woman.”
The deep paganism of modern feminism is evident in the effort to reverse that Christian achievement. Many feminists feel that they cannot flourish in the cramped space of the home. To be fully human, they must abandon the hearth and crib to take part in the agon [contest] of the male world outside.
In developing this neo-pagan social cartography, however, feminists are often reacting against a reversal that had taken place earlier within Christian culture. Nineteenth-century sentimental domesticity joined with fascination for the classics to re-divide household and city. From this angle, feminists look less like radicals than like inverted Victorians.
In any case, the Christian response to the whole mess seems clear: to reaffirm the original Christian revolution by insisting that, for both men and women, the household is a school of virtue.
Touchstone, Sept-Oct 2010
I’ll let G.K. Chesterton’s comments accompany this rose
that was on my path through the neighborhood:
“White is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars.
“And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
“In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.”
-G.K. Chesterton, “A Piece of Chalk,” in Tremendous Trifles
Gladsome Lights 