Tea at Trianon: Making Time for Yourself

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, April 2, 2012

Making Time for Yourself

Are wives and mothers being selfish when we take time for ourselves? I am always struck by the fact that in an airplane parents are told to put the oxygen masks on themselves first before putting them on the children. It is so we will be able to save our children. If we want to be the best we can be for our families than we can't let our health fall through the cracks, and that means our mental, emotional and spiritual health. An elderly lady in the Carmelite order once confided to me that she felt selfish when she took time to put everything aside and pray. I asked her if she felt the same way about eating and she said "no." I told her that as food was necessary to the body so was prayer necessary to the soul. Every person needs to take some quiet time to regroup, to meditate, to reflect on life and where God is leading them. This can be done best in a quiet place like church but it can also be done while soaking in a tub, taking a brisk walk, working out at the gym, sitting under the hair dryer or blissfully ensconced in one's special corner at home. Making time for yourself can also entail, on a more mundane level, giving yourself a manicure and a facial, writing a letter to an old friend, or working on that novel you promised yourself you would write someday. I do all of the above to re-energize; I especially love to take long walks in the country. When the batteries are recharged then the task at hand goes smoother.

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