Talking Tuesday: Ontology and Telos

I've been pondering how to write this all day, and not really knowing how to start, so perhaps best to start in the middle and work outward.  I should also say that this is very short and preliminary, and probably is going to be something I'm noodling through for a long time, so don't take any of this as definitive, but rather the start of a long conversation.

On a recent phone call with a dear friend, I said, "If my 30s were all about ontology, I think my 40s are going to be about telos."  She laughed, but understood what I meant.  Long-time readers will know that I've written a fair bit about the ongoing existential crisis of motherhood, and I think I spent a lot of the past decade trying to parse that.  Who am I?  What am I made for? What am I doing?  These are the basic questions of ontology.  Becoming a mother brought a lot of those questions to the forefront for me, and I thought a lot about them (mostly through the Twilight series, but a number of more serious books as well). 

While I'm not sure any of us can ever definitely state that we know the full depths of our selves, or that we've completely sorted the basic ontological questions, at a certain point, I think you can start to say to yourself, This is Who I Am.  Maybe it isn't a particularly articulate ontology, but you begin to have light on the darker corners of yourself, and can sketch more of a whole picture in your mind.

Lately, however, I find myself occupied with questions of telos.  Telos, in some ways, is a far bigger question, but it naturally follows the ontological ones.  Ontology asks "what," but telos asks "why."  Why am I here?  Why am I?  Where is the meaning of everything located?  I sense in the larger culture a nihilistic impulse that is hard to resist.  It is hard not to feel despair, easy to find no meaning in the day-to-day grind of life. 

I could write fancy pat theological answers to those large questions, and the theological answers are good and right: we are here to pursue God, to find our life with Him, to seek the beauty in creation, to find salvation.  But those are amorphous, and difficult to get a handle on somehow. 

Seek peace and pursue good.  That is something repeated a lot in the services of the Church, and while maybe still not concrete, a good thing to hold on to.  But then the next question is: What is good?  How do I find peace?

I used to be able to answer these questions without hesitation, without question, with theological certainty.  But I find as I've experienced hard things, and then even harder things, that I have less certitude than I did previously.  Perhaps that is normal and part of the course of things. 

I do know that the answer to those questions is located outside myself, and within the Church, and in seeking I will find, but man, the road is long and winding.  I suppose the way to find them is to excavate the truth in the Liturgy (I've had a post brewing about this for some time), to stay present with the texts, the rhythms and musical phrases, and let them sink down deep into me.

The past few years I've sung the Hymn of Kassiani during the Holy Tuesday Bridegroom Matins at a local parish.  (It is the only time during the liturgical year that this hymn is sung).  The parish is Slavic-oriented, but the priest broad-minded, so he has graciously allowed me to sing it Byzantine-style.  Sung in Byzantine chant, it is probably one of the harder pieces of vocal music for a singer to master.  The piece slides between two tones, one minor, one major, with lots of "in between" notes; staying within the musical phrasing and not losing the meaning of the textual phrasing is a feat.  I always go into it with fear and trembling.  But the text always haunts me, the great lament of it that seems to rise up from my bones, particularly toward the end.  There is a great stillness that seems to accompany it, as the sound rises to the top of the nave.

Perhaps the way toward telos is to be mindful and remember those moments when something buries itself into your soul, and gives you a hook to hold on to. 

Blue Heather Doocot

I finally finished my Doocot sweater!  This sweater was a constant game of yarn chicken, it must be said.  I had six skeins of denim heather Swish (worsted) in my stash that I wanted to use up, and thought this pattern might just make it, but ordered two more skeins just to be safe. 

I got most of the body and sleeves done on those eight skeins, but ran out in the middle of the ribbing in early December, and had to wait quite a while for the final skein to arrive. 

Then it was the holidays and I didn't have time to pick up this project until last week.  I finished the ribbing on the bottom and the neck ribbing in fairly short order and then spent an hour or so seaming the sleeves on day last week. 

I wet blocked it, but didn't aggressively block the ribbing so it has a more fitted look than the design suggests, which I prefer.  I probably could have made a size one and been fine, but the two is good.

I'm actually quite chuffed with this sweater--it turned out way better than expected, and I'm now rethinking my plans for the Quince and Co. chickadee yarn I bought in December with a gift card from last Christmas!  (Although, given my tension and the fact that I knit this with supposedly worsted weight yarn at 22 stitch gauge, I'm not sure what the chickadee fabric will look like.  Swatch, swatch, and swatch again!)  The chickadee is about the color of my scarf, for reference.

My original plan was to make another Carbeth pullover, but I think I like the versatility of this weight of sweater, and would like to make a cowl-necked version out of the Chickadee yarn which means dropping the front neckline slightly.  In the meantime, however, I have something else I need to work on first, so I can consider my options while I finish that project. 

The green wool skirt is another recent thrifted find; I thrifted a Sag Harbor wool skirt earlier this fall and love the way it fits, so I've been watching ebay and snagging a few more in other colors as I find them, since I know the size is good.  

This one is longer than the other three I have, and I originally planned to take it up to match the just-above-the-knee length of the others, but I'm kind of digging the midi length for this skirt, so I think I'll leave it.  My only regret is that it doesn't have pockets (the other skirts do) but I feel so snazzy in this outfit, I don't even care that much.  I'll take that for a win!

The amount of petersham I cut off the waistband edge.  I left the full length of the waistband, however, in case I need to let it out again in the future.

 I also took in my rust cord skirt yesterday, because I'm really missing it in my closet.  The best way to have done it would have been to completely reconstruct it, but I knew I'd never get it done if I had to unpick everything, so I did a sort of lazy alteration that will do for now.  I took the waistband off the back of the skirt, and then pinched out half an inch or so down the center back from the waist to the hem.  

I pin-basted, checked the fit, pinched out another half inch (for a total of just over an inch), sewed up the seam, finger-pressed it to the side, and then reattached the waistband and resewed the hem.  I really need to redo my whole skirt sloper, but that is a project for another day.  (I also want to see where my body "lands" so to speak, since I've been up and down and up and down for the past 6-8 months.  The alteration I just did can be undone again if need be).

The Depth of Ourselves

Longtime readers will know that we live in a small house with inadequate built-in storage (read: basically no closets), and that managing the stuff of six people occupies a greater amount of my time than I would really like.  Too much "stuff" stresses me out, and frankly, I think it stresses my kids out, even though they still want to have new things, and have a hard time letting go of some other things to make room.  I have two children who are legit hoarders and their stuff just has to be gone through regularly to cull out the hair clippings, random trash from the playground, school papers, and other "treasures" they squirrel away.

The first few years that we had kids, the gifting at Christmas was a bit insane.  Don't get me wrong--I'm grateful that we have so many relatives who want to love our kids with physical gifts, and I know there are lots of kids out there who don't get any presents at all.  That said, my kids couldn't even process all the stuff they got, and since the fill-and-spill stage of play seemed to last FOREVER, it felt to me like it was just more stuff I had to pick up all the time.  One of my children always seemed unhappy on Christmas day, no matter what the presents were, and it was just so frustrating to me.

A few years ago, I decided to simplify things and do three gifts only--a book, a pajama, and a toy.  I realized that my kids were unable to handle surprises at that time, so they picked out exactly what they wanted, and each of the grandparents chose which of the three things they wanted to give the kids, and we gave the final gift.  (There were always a few little extras from aunts and cousins and friends, but just having the three main things was helpful).

It worked okay for a couple years, but I realized last year that things needed to shift (we substituted an "experience" for the book last year and the kids got a year-long membership to LegoLand).  This year, I decided throw the whole system out the window and let the kids pick out a number of toys each.

Why? I realized that my unhappy child was unhappy because that child feels good when there is a big pile of presents to open.  This child didn't want to have to choose just one thing, or two things, but felt guilty when unable to make a decision because the want was so strong and the stakes felt so high to make the "right" choice.  (I understand this feeling well).

We talked through it all in the weeks before Christmas, as each child sorted through what they wanted on their lists, and I saw that I had to let go of this vision of "simplicity" at Christmastime.  (This has been part of a larger picture of me letting go as a parent.  I have made a number of shifts in my thinking in the past year about how I want to parent my kids, and letting go of unrealistic expectations, and living where my kids are at is one of them.  I don't always succeed, but I'm trying).

My concern these days is less about the accumulation of "stuff" and more about the why of what they want.

Do they want a new toy because they just want it, or do they want it because they think it will fix something inside them that feels bad?  One child in particular struggles with this, and we've talked a lot about it over the past year as we've struggled through it together.  Every opportunity for gifts and purchasing has come with a conversation about why the desire for this thing is so desperately high.  Often it is because this child feels bad about something, and can't stand to live in those feelings.

So we are working on living in the bad feelings, and not using "things" to make the feelings go away.  Because actually, the things don't make the feelings go away.  At least not for good.  Sure, they might go away for a little while, but as soon as the "new toy" shine is off the thing, the bad feelings are back, and the desire for a new thing to fill that bad-feeling place is back.

This has been a hard lesson for me to learn over the years as well.  If we are really honest with ourselves, I think most people living in this late capitalist period do this in some way or another.  I'm trying to learn to live in the bad feelings and go through them instead of trying to smother them with stuff or drown them with food.

At the same time, however, I don't want my kids to feel so deprived that they make reckless financial decisions as adults or spend their lives chasing things instead of building relationships.  It's a fine balance, to learn to live with less, make do and mend, to value and use what you have, but still feel that you are worthy of receiving love from others in the form of physical things.  Because gifts do speak about worth louder than words sometimes.   There's a reason why Gary Chapman identifies gift-giving or receiving as one of the five primary love languages.

I suppose what it really comes down to is exploring the reality and depth of love: what it is to love another person fully, to meet their needs how and where they are, and to affirm their worth and value in lots of different ways.

~

{It is Philip's day today, and while I'm certainly thinking about it, I have little to say about it today.  I'm unwell and emotionally exhausted, and I can't poke around inside myself to see what I find.  Thirteen years is a long time.}

Happy Christmas!

I've posted this one before, but it never gets old.

So here we are, finally at the end of the Nativity Fast.  To be honest, the Fast seemed to go quickly this year, more so than other years.  Probably because I spent the first three and a half weeks of it nursing sick kids!  There were plenty of challenges in the Fast, however, as is usually the case.  

This seemed to be the Fast in which Toilets Did Not Behave.  We have issues with our plumbing anyway, because it is the city, and apparently no one in this area vents plumbing stacks, ever, and heavy rain seems to make things a bit worse (and there was a lot of rain this month) but I do what I can to mitigate things.  In any case, our second floor toilet required quite a bit of intervention this past month.  Thankfully, it seems mostly resolved now.  

In related plumbing issues, the down pipe from the shower in that same bathroom has a tendency to work loose on the u-joint at the bottom (the pvc screw that attaches the joint to the pipe above gets loose) and then leaks into the kitchen, but thankfully we have an access panel just below that join, so I can tighten the pipe screw as needed.  So there were a few leaks to deal with this month.

This isn't even all of them.

The girls spent the past two weeks busily making things in their room, and hiding their presents from prying eyes.  There was a truly impressive stack of cards and things to unwrap!  

Boo made me a little boat out of wood and painted it himself with watercolor paint--I'm so impressed.

Multi-colored on the sides.

And since I'm sure you are dying to know what I wore yesterday, here it is, all thrifted except the tights and hat: cashmere sweater, cotton undershirt, wool skirt, wool tights, dansko booties, and handknit beret from a couple years ago.  I wish I could remember what size needle I used for this hat, because I really like how it fits and haven't been able to replicate it on subsequent hats using the same pattern.

I've lost a bit of weight this month, and my corduroy skirts are all too big and look pretty sloppy.  I've already taken in the blue and green ones once, and I confess, I'm not looking forward to altering all three again, as I think I shall have to take them completely apart and start again.  I thrifted some Sag Harbor wool skirts recently (of which the red skirt above is one) and I plan to use one of them as a block to alter my Anne Adams 9481 flat pattern, since it clearly needs adjustment.

Part of me is also concerned that I might alter the skirts only to find that they don't fit again after the holidays!  (But I'm also trying to get into a mindset of eating in the middle of the lane all the time, and not swinging to extremes during fasting/feasting seasons, so perhaps it is good to solider on with alterations).

 

But that is a project for another day, since I am very tired today, and fighting a cold.  So I plan to do little things, but mostly just rest.  We are having Piglet's birthday meal tonight (his birthday is Christmas Eve, and he decided a few years ago to wait for the meal until the 8th to have non-fasting food!), but it is easy since he wants Shake Shack and ice cream.

The kids received a number of lego sets for Christmas, and I have to think about storage for some of them.  (I have a pretty good storage system in place, but several of the sets are rather large and require some re-jigging of the system on my part).  

In the meantime, the sun is shining, the air is crisp and cold, and my to-do list is manageable.