Tea at Trianon: Gardening as Medicine

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

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Gardening as Medicine

From The Catholic Gentleman:

We need to turn to the earth from which we were formed, and which we were commanded to tend. There we can seek reintegration and re-connection; we can seek healing. At risk of oversimplifying, I think there are three things that make this medicine so fit for all of us suffering, in varying ways, from the challenges of contemporary culture. Gardening calls us to work, to wait, and to worship.

One does not have to look far to find an employer who says: I am just trying to find people who are actually willing to work. In one of those deep ironies in the demise of a human culture, the general rejection of the non-work realities in life, such as true leisure and worship, has led to the demise of work itself. Now work, often both over-emphasized and under-appreciated, has lost its rightful place in human life. A lack of the habits of good, hard work is one of the most glaring features of the millennial generation. Indeed many of us suffer from a dearth of good work, the kind of work that can strengthen the body, nourish the spirit, and connect people to one another, even while producing things useful for life. (Read more.)