This is such a lovely, gentle read for these warm June days. Written by an uncannily sympatico soul to my own. It's like she knows what I am going to ask before I ask it. This book has brought me back to the beautiful, calm, long Spring days when I first encountered St Elizabeth of the Trinity's story in my twenties. It is a good place for me to be brought back. I am filled with a calm gratitude.
One quote among others that has stayed with me came tucked in a little story she tells about her mom's beautiful sense of her daughter's needs. They live in a small house when she is young. There is one bedroom for all the children. But without Claire asking, her mother knows that this artistic, introverted child of hers needs a place all her own where she can close the door to read and write. So, one day her grandfather comes over with all his tools and she watches "wide eyed" as he builds a few walls in the corner of the big bedroom, fashioning her a room of her own and "before long, with one swipe of a sliding door, I was alone. I spent many days in the tiny room. I read, wrote, became myself. I learned to pray in that room." I loved this quote, because I had a room like that, where I too became myself. And my parents did not fill my days with sports, activities, and busyness - they let me be who I was.
Claire goes on to say this:
"As an adult, I came to realize that it was a sacred space - that room, that house - in the sense that wherever God has worked, has done something marvelous, has mingled with us in our daily lives, eternity puts its stamp on that place. It is always a wonder that a God unlimited by time and space binds himself to it in each moment nd corner where we encounter Him. And it is a fact that He creates places for us. Since Eden, He has carved out spaces and has hovered over our chaos to help us make rooms and homes, chapels and churches and places of pilgrimage that speak to us of something holy here and point to something holy beyond".
All I could keep saying as I read was YES, YES, YES! That is why our homes are not just houses. They are called Domestic Churches for a real reason. Each nook and cranny is filled with encounters - between Him and ourselves at kitchen sinks, when we turn off the lights at night, when we check on the kids in their beds. Between Him and each of our children - all those secret encounters we know nothing about that made their rooms holy, their desks perhaps a place of tryst with Him, all the aha moments of grace that came when they loaded the dishwasher or mowed the lawn. Our homes are HOLY because they are places of encounter with the living God. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! This is what my hero, William Morris, knew instinctively, when he said every house should be beautiful and filled only with things we love. He wasn't especially religious, ole William, but he had a sensitive soul for understanding that beauty matters and must be protected in our homes. That it was a place of 'encounter'.
It has been so providential to read this book. It is so 'other' than what is scrolling noisily on fb and instagram these days. It brings me back to a wooden floor by a window covered with ivy which was swimming in the comforting sound of bees hard at work. This floor of my own bedroom as a girl, as I sat propped against an old radiator reading and writing and learning to pray. I cannot ask for a better memory.
Deo Gratias!
I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull
Thank you, Denise.
Wonderful read!