The Peace and Quiet of Order and Beauty

One
It’s been some length of time since I’ve indulged myself in the mental calm of Friday Quick Takes. And if there’s anything I need more of, it’s mental calm. Spent the week with the verse, “In quietness and trust shall be your strength” rattling round in my cranial cavity–it seems too elevated to call it a brain any more–and tried to work it several alternative ways. In freaking out and despondency shall be your despair. In sarcasm and laziness shall be your demise. In cooking luncheon shall be your successful way of completely avoiding reality. That last one’s not quite so good. No, it seems the verse is really the best way.

Two
It is strange how quiet can descend, as it were, when you make a little room for it. I began the week knowing in my soul that I had to just put all the things away, and everything that couldn’t be put away had to be thrown away. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how to put anything away without taking all the things out of where they are, which is actually a disastrous thing to do. I gave the children a short list of school work every day and told them to leave me alone, and I dismantled my own bedroom, and then the kitchen pantry, and then their rooms. I have only the school room left. Well…I could try facing Sheol, or the Garage, but I’m not God am I. I can’t do everything. I must leave some imperfections in my housekeeping or everyone will hate me.
Three
We talked about this over our Epiphany Luncheon (a little roasted acorn squash, a modicum of white fish mellowed in a curried béchamel, my own invention, and then much later in the evening, just a little mango cobbler, for Jesus, as it were). If the last are supposed to be first and the first are supposed to be last, and the person who most completely eats their food gets to chose a chocolate from the box first, what would Jesus do? Wouldn’t he not finish his food so as to let others get a chocolate first? But that would be disobedient. “Oh, that’s easy,” I said, “he would eat his food, but then let the others go first.”
“And that’s why they all hated him,” said Alouicious. Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s so. There’s nothing more irritating than God like humility and agape, even in God.
Four
Didn’t actually read the Marife Condo article about cleanliness being next to godliness. To read it I’d have had to stop cleaning. Am totally going to read it later. But did think about it. I mean, and I guess this is basically evil, but I do have a very strong sense that if I could get my house clean, I would be a morally good person, that God would accept me in a way he obviously will not if the floor is dirty. And I’m willing, apparently, to achieve the moral perfection of a clean house while violating everybody’s sensibilities in my screaming rage, and breaking various divine commandments like, Don’t Be A Complete Jerk To Your Family. I know, I know, it’s expressed slightly differently in the biblical text. In my broken emotional life, I am willing to sin for the sake of cleanliness, I’m willing to satisfy my own sense of what I require, and then I project that sense onto God. I’m really delighted to hear that apparently other people do this too.
Five
Here is an iconic and brilliant visual of all my thoughts and feelings about keeping house.

There’s the lovely Van Gogh bedroom, serene, calming, beautiful. And there are the aircraft coming into to destroy everything. I just am so charmed that my boys thought to do their wall this way. It is now my favorite room in the house.
Six
Surprisingly, as the week went on, and I cleaned and the children were forced away from their various inane electronic devices, a deep peaceful calm settled over us all. Several moments I found myself sitting in the living room, everyone employed in some kind of absorbing activity, and not a sound rose to my ears. It was extraordinary. This has never really happened before, with six children. Someone is always talking or yelling or complaining or tattling. I wondered, for a fleeting moment, if there was hope, if they might grow up and be able to not chatter all the time. Each time I held my breath and pondered all these things in my heart, before someone stood on someone’s pencil box and broke three special colored pencils.
Seven
I blogged a long time ago about swinging back and forth between order and beauty. I’m not a very practical person. I major more on beauty than order, to my occasional undoing. But I think it’s true that without order, beauty doesn’t have anywhere to be. Likewise, order, without beauty, doesn’t really rest the mind. It’s not that cleanliness is next to godliness, it’s that the mind is distracted and fractured, the body hounded in various directions. The collective desire to declutter, to throw away, to not be so hassled by stuff, is really a human acknowledgement of a divine property. Of course we try to produce it on our own without reference to him, but the fact that we want it is a mark of his glory. He is perfect order and perfect beauty. And deep peace can only be found when he brings those two great realities together in the mind and heart.

Go check out This Ain’t the Lyceum!