The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin

This book is a quick read. I reread this for mom school, Simply Convivial, where the lesson work was covering the kindness of smiling.

The lesson lead quote was, " It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity and

discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted."

It reminded me of the Unsinkable Molly Brown. Widowed a couple times over, multiple

nautical catastrophes, and she was still sailing and cheerful about it.

Since I couldn't remember this part and I did remember enjoying the book, I went back (at 2.5x speed) to review the ideas of lightness as a gift. Gretchen Rubin's experiment is as fun as ever and calls to the rather extreme part of my soul that values heroic endeavour and trial by ordeal - my own family is in engaged in a couple trials by ordeal at the moment, some chosen and others received. I like the idea of categorizing resolutions and working through them in rapid succession.

But I wish there had been more of the philosophy, method, and application, and less focus on the moments of failure which made it smack of the confessional. I wonder if listing those errors made her feel like she could give herself credit for honesty. It is a hard thing to live without a God that covers your sin

As a returning blogger and commonplacer I enjoyed her own beginner blogging stories and her search for the things she loved as a child. My own beginning blog probably came out around the time hers did, but where she was pursuing happiness, I wanted to be taken very seriously. I have learned to laugh at myself since then, as a result I have endless reasons to be smiling.

I noted to my mother that we had similar mothers, "My mother made me feel like nothing is insurmountable if you do a little everyday."

On that note, quolable at points, good for a light read on a long day, helpful to remember the good of being cheerful, and better for remembering active happiness can be a holy endeavor if it is a selfless one.

I think I liked Happier at Home more, but I don't think I can justify reading that one when I'm supposed to be reading books off my shelves.

Further Up and Further In

Latin: New Discoveries

“Fiat voluntas tua”

Professor Lewis was right.

I took a handful of years of Latin, added another term in college, taught the subject, and still couldn’t get it to work naturally in my brain. I was wrestling over tenses instead of text.

Jack Lewis said to read Acts.

This is brilliant really. Read something you know inside out, that you breathe. I found out I don’t know Acts as well as that.

So, I went back to Kindergarten and the Psalms that run through my head when I’m not doing much - Blessed is the man that does not walk in the council of the ungodly…

Psalm 1

Beatus vir qui non abiit in conselio imperiorum

Et in via peccatorum non stetit,

Et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit,

Sed in lege Domine voluntas eius,

Et in eius lege meditabitur die ac nocte.

As a teacher, I have samples of qui and eius,  the present and future tenses, word arrangement, and common vocabulary. This is a good section to memorize as a first year language student, but it steps towards superlative because it is not contrived. The failure of Latin teaching is in part because the children learning it are unable to integrate it. Like much of mathematical teaching, it is posoted as an organizational system with nothing to categorize that is not randomly generated.

Language must dance. Otherwise all you have is the chopped up pieces sewn together as you run around trying to catch the right kind of lightning to animate it. This does not require strange stories about shipwrecks or overly obsessive descriptions of warfare. Latin is the language of Caesar, but not only his.

Take what a student knows and build off of it.

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Back to chapter 1.

As a student, I keep going back, mulling it over more. “Voluntas” is will as in the same phrasing used in the Pater Noster for “Your will be done”. I believe this is in keeping with the  tripartite soul, but this changes a chunk of what I know in English*. “His delight is on the law of the Lord” becomes “In the law of God, the will…” In English delight has an emotional or inspirational connotation. The Latin is speaking of a fixed thing, a part of a person, and that if the part of the person is planted (like a tree planted) then the roots of it are fed directing both the Reason and the Heart towards the Ordo Amoris.

It also seems to carry more imagery in Latin, but I wonder if that is the nature of the language that enfolds meaning like a puzzle box. English can be loose, but it can also get specific with more distinct words. Latin pulls specificity around itself in endings and increases emphasis and understanding through word order.

I am guessing that the imagery from later in the Psalm begins sooner because the words can be applied to water movement as well.

“Blessed is the man who is not washed away by high councils,

nor stands in the stream of sinners…”

he shall be planted like a tree after all.

At the end the phrasing yields - concilio imperiorum and the via peccatorum become the concilio justorom where the peccatores can not stand and via justorum where the imperiorum are destroyed or perhaps washed away. What began with Eden continues to Flood imagery. They say Jerome favored the original structure more than most. This makes me want to find out.

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As a teacher I can’t believe the practical change a few days have made. My affections are won, or I should say, are what they ever were, and Latin has given me more of my dearest treasure, and beautified it. There is mystery. I want to know more.

*This popped up in Psalm 23 as well which is Psalm 22 in the Vulgate (9 and 10 are combined to my understanding). The first line is Domine regit me. The Lord rules me. That is not “The Lord is my shepherd.”

Epiphany 2023: Nature Walk

There was a full moon on Twelfth Night. It rode low over the hills just to the North East with Mars high and to the right. Mist sat on the town in between the hills and high thick clouds billowed to the right above the mill.

Epiphany was clear and we walked the Latah Trail. It is part of a greater project to run a transcontinental bike path. Our stretch runs from Pullman, Wa through Moscow and Troy with a break at Bear Creek due to private land management. We walked out towards Moscow.

I found unknown three pronged tracks on fresh snow.

And views to track through the seasons.

It is raining now. You can hear it on the tin roof, so we won't be able to track the moon tonight.