This week:
Themes: the transition nature of reality. Quote from Rohr on how people long past are viewed as awful but may have been warriors for the things they changed yet couldn’t quite get away from all of it. Mystics were still human and trapped in their era. What will I struggle with when I look back? My whiteness, my eating of meat, driving a car across the country, still using plastic occasionally. I believe there will be plenty that future generations will judge us for.
What isn’t easily seen is what we strive to do in each day. I eliminated plastic soap containers years ago and went back to bar soap. We intentionally kept our offices downtown to keep people’s commutes down. I eat meatless most days of the week and indulge on weekends.
The judging that goes on in retrospect seems the smallest form of cowardice and myopia. We haven’t the slightest idea what people’s lives were truly like, yet pass blame as if we’re victors.
I am not speaking of evils. Evils such as murder, selling humans, sexually abusing children.
I was reading Jane Eyre again this week because why not, and in the intro, she discusses the what she was trying to achieve and communicate in the book. It wasn’t feminism or voting rights or a woman’s destiny. Jane wanted to create a character that was free to choose and be independent. That didn’t necessarily mean in her time the right to vote. It was a stretch for her to demand that she marry someone she wanted, that she not be forced to choose a religion she didn’t believe in and she be happy.
Reading about her own life that provided a wealth of material for her stories…
I took my parents on an outing out to the countryside and found a lovely diner. How in the world does this farming community have some of the best cod I’ve ever had? Like, seriously, the best. I had no idea cod was anything other than an extremely flat, tasteless, shapeless piece of white fish flesh. This cod was as tall as a piece of halibut and almost as firm. It was cover by a generous lemon twist, amazing spices and the fixings to boot. I will be back (Harvester in Spangle thank you).
Something I spend considerable time thinking on and researching to some degree is this balance or conversation regarding domestic life and duties and a professional life.
As a woman, these are things I get to actually ponder now. Less than a long generation ago, these were still rights to strive for. There wasn’t much of a discussion. There wasn’t real tension of how to do it; it wasn’t done much unless poverty conscripted you.