monthly musings vol. 10
the gift of mornings, feeling the weight of the world, and staying awake to it all
You’ll note this monthly round-up newsletter is going out before we’re even halfway through the month. Such is December - It’s impossible to book anything or plan anything because people are taking off for the holidays. And as it should be, I say! If we’re lucky enough to be able to build a little bit of rest into our days, let’s do so. So this will be my Substack sign off for the month. I’ll be scheduling my LOTR Sunday Advent posts1 but otherwise trying to keep a minimal online profile. I’m going to be hitting the ground running in 2024 - new expanding audio work2, plans for long form essays and series, and some exciting news I can’t wait to share with all - so, I need to build in a little reprieve.
This is something I’m extremely bad at doing. For all my love of cozy - bring on the fuzzy socks and cups of tea - I’m a doer.3 Some of this is good. I think our cultural fascination with ‘Netflix and Chill’ can go a bit far. Life isn’t really meant to be lived on a couch. What I’m really talking about is mental rest: time to read, time to pray, time to think, time to just sit and be. I’m spectacularly bad at doing this. I will write Substack posts, make endless to do lists, rearrange furniture, send voice memos, anything to avoid sitting and being. Man’s eternal problem, as Pascal wisely noted.4
Winter for me is a time of sunrises.
This is perhaps the gift of stillness I need so badly. Let me stay awake to it. Advent’s eternal refrain, Stay awake, stay awake. Remember, remember. Every morning I am down at the barn before dawn and I get to see the first inching rays of sunlight hit the frosted fields. It is the only time when I find myself stunned into quietude. Often I am up early enough to see the moon fading in the sky. Many times I will see other early risers - a fox padding across the lane, a bald eagle spectacularly soaring through the fog. All of this is a gift and I want to live more in tune with moments like this.
Here’s a cliche - I love this time of year. I love going to the grocery store and hearing I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas on the speakers. (When I went into our toddler’s room in the morning to tell her we had a dusting of snow on the ground, she logically concluded, “So it’s Christmas!”) I love the lights and the candles. I love my Celtic Christmas tunes as the soundtrack to afternoon chores. I love the dark winter sky and falling into existential smallness contemplating the stars.
Our Advent traditions are simple thus far - our children are still so young. But the small things we’ve done have had their fair share of magic. St. Nicholas leaving behind books on his feast day. Advent candles lit each Sunday with the lights off and a round of O Come O Come Emmanual (add in the toddler singing along in her sweet voice with nonsense lyrics and try not to tear up a little). Dancing around the den to Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. And I was even able to dream feed the non-bottle taking nursing baby without waking her so that I could sneak out to Rorate Mass downtown5, a very special Advent Mass swimming in candles and chant.
Magic. All of it. Unearned, undeserved, true and real, magic. Stay awake, stay awake.
I know there are a lot of very sad and ugly and terrible things happening in the world. And as I’ve written before, December - with all its lights and beauty - also seems to bring its fair share of remorse. Tragedies. So much unexplained. So much deeply unfair. Does it feel a little silly to drink eggnog in a warm sweater by the fire? It does. Why me? Why do I get this moment when so many others have so little, when so many are hurting? It can sour the warmest, sweetest times.
I was thinking of Job as I fell asleep last night (as one does). But really I was thinking about those well-meaning friends of his. Here was this righteous, good man suffering so deeply. So much loss, so much pain. Why? The friends knew there had to be an answer. Everything has a purpose. For every reaction there is a catalyst, a reason. Things don’t just happen. Perhaps Job had angered God in some way. Perhaps he hadn’t prayed enough. Perhaps he had even cursed God in his anguish.
But Job was innocent. He was a good man and he didn’t deserve all that misery. It just… happened. Who can fathom that kind of answer? God’s response to Job’s cries - eerily mimicking Christ’s own agonized Why have you forsaken me? - is intense and primal. God presents Job with his Might and Eternity, with the Whirlwind and the Leviathan. This can seem a bit like a bully response. Who are you to question me? Did you make the Universe?
I prefer to see it as the only answer that can be given - summed up well in this Freederick Buechner quote:
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
Don’t be afraid. The most repeated line in the entire Bible. Don’t be afraid.
In one of my favorite movies - Ben Hur - Esther has just come from hearing Jesus preach. She is filled with so much peace. She visits the lepers and isn’t afraid to touch them. She is able to cast out all the bitterness - the revenge and the loss and the unjustness - that her would-be lover Judah Ben Hur cannot. She speaks these words and I think of them so often: “The World is More than We Know.”
Perhaps that can be the only answer to suffering. It is more than we Know. And perhaps ultimately this was the answer of God, in the whirlwind and the monsters and the oceans and sun - The World is more than You Know.
Enough philosophizing for one baby nap time.
Onto the links:
Need to figure out how to fulfill Sunday obligation and Christmas Mass obligation? (This year with Christmas Eve on a Sunday there will be back to back Mass obligations) The Pillar has some useful ideas.
- is wise beyond her 23 years. This rather gloomy essay perfectly encapsulates so much of what is wrong with our society today - and why in many ways it is in the market’s best interest to keep us all lonely and isolated and dependent on tech: “Loneliness is a Lucrative Industry”
Do you know what the word Ebenezer really means (outside of the context of a Christmas Carol)?
explains in this lovely reflection about the ‘Ebenezers’ in our lives and how they can anchor us to what is truly important.What a beautiful reflection from
on Love as Liturgy. I also used to go to middle-of-the-night Adoration and I have never been able to conjure that kind of stillness during middle-of-the-night nursing sessions… Maybe that’s okay. To everything there is a season. Thank you for this.Absolutely loved this throwback post from
on the “Santa Clause Debate.”I am decidedly not a Lena Dunham fan but this essay (shared by Claire in the above post) was absolutely compelling and strikingly honest. In a world where we feel entitled to everything, even to, maybe especially to, a child, Lena’s grappling with her own loss of fertility was profoundly humbling and thought-provoking.
This is worth upgrading your subscription to
- such a compelling reflection on Nativity Art of old - my favorites are where Mary is lying down and Joseph is helpfully on watch - a much more realistic post-birth scene!Some nuns are using their shareholder status in a gun company to lobby against manufacturing AR-15s. Good on them I say!
If this commercial doesn’t make you cry, you have no soul. Only sort of kidding. Thanks for sharing
. Never has one minute summed up the contradictory all-encompassing joy of parenthood.This was a thoughtful essay in NYT on middle age and the changing views from one’s (both literal and metaphorical) front porch.
- was nice enough to ask me to be a part of her ‘lives outside the box’ series. In this written interview you’ll get to read a bit about the things I’ve said no to, and the things I’ve said yes to, in the past few years. Caveat that I have had certain advantages that have allowed me to make choices at times when I know people wish they could have more choice (everyone may not be able to leave a job to primarily be with kids, etc.). But I hope it can give you permission to do what is right for you and your family, at this moment.
Such a fascinating look into Sylvia Plath’s early married life and her dreams for her artistic marriage (books, babies, beef stew6) and the struggle to attain it. Really excited to read more of
‘s Substack all about Cambridge women.A lovely essay on finding Light in Winter - worth quoting at length -
“We will always have the light of memory. When I recall my grandmother’s face as she read to me from “Black Beauty” or held my hand in church, I can calm down and feel happy. I feel the light on my skin when I remember my mother at the wheel of her Oldsmobile, her black doctor’s bag beside her. Driving home from a house call, she would tell me stories from her life on a ranch in the Great Depression and during the Dust Bowl.
Deep inside us are the memories of all the people we’ve ever loved. A favorite teacher, a first boyfriend, a best friend from high school or a kind aunt or uncle. And when I think of my people, I’m suffused with light that reminds me that I have had such fine people in my life and that they are still with me now and coming back to help me through hard times.
Every day I remind myself that all over the world most people want peace. They want a safe place for their families, and they want to be good and do good. The world is filled with helpers. It is only the great darkness of this moment that can make it hard to see them.
No matter how dark the days, we can find light in our own hearts, and we can be one another’s light. We can beam light out to everyone we meet. We can let others know we are present for them, that we will try to understand. We cannot stop all the destruction, but we can light candles for one another.”
Well, that’s all folks. I’m wishing you so much peace and goodwill and joy this Advent and Christmas Season.
I remember hearing once that a blessing is your most vulnerable wish for somebody, your most tender hope. With that in mind, I give you this “blessing for presence” from John O’Donohue:
May you awaken to the mystery of being here
And enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
May you respond to the call of your gift
And find the courage to follow its path.
May the flame of anger free you from falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and anxiety never linger about you. May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift, Woven around the heart of wonder.
Cheers x
Katie
on this note, I’m taking on a bigger freelance load, so if you know anyone who wants some professional audio work done (recording, sound design, content, editing…) send them my way. www.katiemarquetteaudio.com
Perhaps this has been passed on to my girls, who are wonderful overnight sleepers (usually because they’ve gone so hard all day long) but both struggle with naps. I think we maybe have a family problem of just not being able to quiet our minds very well…
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
Honestly pretty much my dream in a nutshell, too.
I took struggle with sitting quietly even though I do love to curl up and relax. I love to be productive and if I can't then I mindlessly scroll rather than pray, read, write etc. That quote from Pascal is so good! 👌🏻
Those are some good sunrises! I also notice the sunrises in the winter, mostly because I am much too lazy to see the sunrise past the spring equinox, but it is a shard of beauty in an otherwise frozen and sleepy landscape.