Tea at Trianon: Ordinary People Living Inner Lives

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, December 2, 2023

Ordinary People Living Inner Lives

From Heather King:

She decided to become a Catholic.

But what was her vocation now? Hitz wondered.

“Never short on self-esteem, I was sure that God would want me to do something quite unusual. … I figured I could live in a poor neighborhood as a sort of Catholic anarchist, teaching Greek and Latin out of my living room to the locals.”

Instead, she sold her car, gave away her furniture, put her books in storage, and for three years lived under obedience at Madonna House, a Catholic lay community in Combermere, Ontario, founded by Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896-1985).

The life is rigorous: no internet, virtually no time alone. “All that was permitted to me was a full, ordinary human life: work, service, friendship; leisured time in nature … lovingly prepared liturgical celebrations.”

Hitz saw the profound value in such a life. At the same time, she thought hard about the point of higher learning. She began to realize she was stifling her deepest desires and gifts. She began to think of returning to the small college that had first nurtured her thirst for learning, for asking the deep questions, for pondering the works of those who have asked those questions before us: Homer, St. Augustine, Dante, Dostoevsky.

She realized that throughout time and history there has been a huge unremarked upon body of “ordinary people — library users, taxi drivers, history buffs, prisoners, stockbrokers — doing intellectual work without recognizing it as such or taking pride in it.”

“Lost in Thought” celebrates such people. People who participate fully and responsibly in life but, left to their own devices, immediately shut the door and curl up with a book.(Read more.)