Posted on by Kurt Bodling

bonus weekend commonplaces

I’ve started reading the book Home Life in Germany by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick (NY: Macmillan, 1908). It came from my parents’ house and I’m particularly interested in what it has to say because two of my grandparents were young folk in Germany at that point.

The author, Cecily Sidgwick (1854-1934), was English. Her parents came from German Jewish families. The Germany she writes about was soon to dissolve in World War I and then the Great Depression. But that’s okay with me because I’m trying to learn about my grandparents (whom I never met) and who came to the US in between those two world-changing events.

Anyway, here are a couple lines in the first chapters that caught my eyes:

“There are many Germanys. The one we hear most of in England nowadays is armed to the teeth, set wholly on material advancement, in a dangerously warlike mood, hustling us without scruple from our place in the world’s markets, a model of municipal government and enterprise, a land where vice, poverty, idleness, and dirt are all unknown.” (page 4)

“It must be a dull child who is content with a mechanical toy, and it is consoling to observe that most children break the mechanism as quickly as possible and then play sensibly with the remains. Many of the toys known to generations of children seemed to be as popular as ever, and quite unchanged.” (page 11)

“… I have no faith in Germany. The nation is so desperately intent on improvement that some dreadful day it will improve its toys.” (page 12)

“In most German homes the noisy, spoilt American child would not be endured for a moment, and the little tyrant of a French family would be taught its place, to the comfort and advantage of all concerned.” (pages 13-14)

“The scandalous ignorance of mythology displayed by Englishwomen still shocks the right-minded German.” (page 21)

I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy the rest of this book.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

and a time to every purpose

“For there is a time to fight and a time to make use of silence. If we truly possess the pedagogy of silence that comes from God, we will have a little of heaven’s patience.”


Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), page 154.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

and a time [for the silent] to speak

“The virtue of silence does not mean that we must never speak. It invites us to remain mute when there are no good reasons to speak up. Ecclesiastes says: ‘There is … a time to keep silence, and a time to speak’ (Eccles 3:7). Referring to these words, Saint Gregory of Nyssa remarks: ‘The time to keep silence is mentioned first, because by silence we learn the art of speaking well.’ When, therefore, should a Christian who desires to become holy be silent, and when should he speak? He should be silent when it is not necessary to speak, and he should speak when necessity or charity requires it. Saint Chrysostom gives the following rule: ‘Speak only when it is more useful to speak than to be silent.’


“Saint Arsenius acknowledges that he often regretted having spoken, but never regretted having kept silence. Saint Ephrem says: ‘Speak much with God but little with men’.”


Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), p. 239.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

a plan to become a contemplative

“If you are waiting for someone to come along and feed you the contemplative life with a spoon, you are going to wait a long time, especially in America. You had better renounce your inertia, pray for a little imagination, ask the Lord to awaken your creative freedom, and consider some of the following possibilities:

“1. It is possible that by the sacrifice of seemingly good economic opportunities, you could move into the country or to a small town where you would have more time to think. This would involve the acceptance of a relative poverty perhaps. ….

“2. Wherever you may be, it is always possible to give yourself the benefit of those parts of the day which are quiet because the world does not value them. One of these is the small hours of the morning. [getting up “around four or five in the morning”]….

“3. It should be too obvious to mention that Sunday is set apart by nature and by the tradition of the Church as a day of contemplation. ….

“4. Whenever one seeks the light of contemplation, he commits himself by that very fact to a certain spiritual discipline. … But it would be a mistake for a man or woman with all the obligations and hardships of secular life to live in the world like a cloistered monk. To try to do this would be an illusion. ….

“5. It follows from this that for the married Christian, his married life is essentially bound up with his contemplation. This is inevitable. ….

“In conclusion, then, though it is right that the Christian layman try to keep his life ordered and peaceful, and to some extent recollected, what he needs most of all is a contemplative life centered in the mystery of marriage. The development of such a spirituality is very necessary and much to be desired.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. (NY: HarperOne, 2003), pp. 137-141. [Merton wrote this in 1959]