Buffy's Salon

Nicholas Nickleby

I have just seen this film and highly recommend it.  I've never seen a whole Dickens novel captured so well on film, a medium which necessitates a great deal of editing.  Yet you never feel rushed or confused.  The film is full of life, there is plenty to laugh at and a timely reminder that wickedness has always been with us.  Nicholas and Kate Nickleby, however, make role models that one hardly ever sees on film these days: good, honorable, kind and loyal.

An interesting costume detail: although the film is set in the 1850s the characters Nicholas Nickleby and Madeline Bray wear costumes from an earlier generation, to suggest that they are wearing family hand-me-downs.

The trailer can be viewed on the official website.

The Notebook

 

In her book The Gentle Ways of the Beautiful Woman Anne Ortlund talks about how important her notebook has been in focusing her life and faith and encourages her readers to follow her example, to invest in a notebook which can be divided into sections to cover the different areas of their daily and long-term lives and, in particular, their goals.

My own notebook is a form of exercise book that comes divided into three sections.  You could just a easily use an A5 or A4 file with paper and dividers. 

The first section is for goals.  Whatever goals I might have I review at least once a week so I can see how I am making progress and if I am finding one tricky to achieve I can make some notes about what my problems are in this area and what I need to do to resolve them.  My goals can be in any area of life.  At the moment I am trying to improve my health by getting more sleep, making fresh vegetable juices to drink and doing yoga exercises.  At other times I might be more concerned about being positive, or more organised around the house.

The second section is for Spiritual Study  This section is really all about your spiritual growth and learning.  I know some people like to keep prayer journals or make a note of their favourite Bible quotations.  I like to keep a list of people I'm praying for and, as I'm reading through "Created to be his Help Meet", making notes as reminders.

The third section of my notebook is for timetables and other forms of organisation and lists.  I keep my daily "keep it clean" ritual here, my notes about how many outfits I needed for what occasion and where I have gaps what I need to purchase.  I also have a list of rooms in the house and am making notes about which need decluttering or redecorating.

Sometimes I might want other sections in my notebooks.  For example, pages for fun and inspiring ideas.  Or, as recommended by Fascinating Womanhood, a place for making a note of the times your husband says something loving or pays you a compliment.  If you're feeling a bit down it's good to remind yourself of the good times you are having, and reassuring to know how many tokens of love he has offered.  Women also have the tendency sometimes to concentrate on the negative things in a relationship and this forces you to pay attention to the very positive things.

I have in the past noted down anything that is worrying me or problems I am having that need to be solved, however small.  When I do my weekly review I can look back and see if anything can be done about these things.  (For example, I might make a note that you never have time to read anymore.  I could then at my weekly review decide to dedicate one evening a week just to reading.)

This is a revamped post from a couple of years ago.

Living A Creative Life

 

Everyone has the potential to be creative.  It is a mistake to think that because you are not being recognised as a creative genius then you shouldn't be pursuing whatever creative activity brings you joy.  This is a side-effect of the modern age, when the brightest and the best are widely available to everyone, thereby casting our own humble efforts into shadow. 

Anyway, there are lots of ways to be creative.  Having a baby is the absolute classic, of course, but how about creating a meal (cooking), or decorating your home or gardening?  My favourite definition of what it means to be creative is having the ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.  (Dewitt Jones.)

Here are some of my favourite ways to see the extraordinary in daily life:

1. Listen to classical music or the theme tunes from inspiring or haunting films.  Even if you are not musical, music can inspire you to be creative in other ways.

   Carry a book of inspiration with you: every time you have a lovely idea, write it down in your notebook for later review.

   Read poetry.  I'm not sure why this is considered to be an elitist occupation.  The spare use of words to create precise pictures and evoke feelings is exhilarating.

   If you are feeling particularly dull, go for a walk in nature.  Really look, see the infinity of life around you.

   Limit your television viewing.  Television is all very well in its place but it dulls your creativity, unlike book reading. 

   Talking of book reading, be sure to read the classics.  Yes, some of them require some intellectual effort because they were written in a different era.  However, aspiring authors are told to read as much as possible before they try to find their own style.  Read books that stretch your mind and exercise it.  Studies have shown that people who keep their mind agile retain their mental health well into their old age.  If you haven't got a lot of spare cash to invest in your own library, use the public one.

   Don't follow the crowd.  You don't have to wear a black suit because everyone else does.  Sometimes it's good to stand out, it's refreshing for other people.

   Expose yourself to great art.  Art galleries and museums are usually free and, of course, most of it is on line now.  Hang copies of those pictures which fill you with joie de vivre(yes, even if they are different to the ones everyone else you know hangs.)

   If you can, go to the theatre.  When people perform live you become part of the action in a way you just can't watching a film.  Read plays, perform plays as a family or get a group of friends together for play reading evenings (everyone taking a different part).

   Be more childlike.  Obviously you are an adult and most of the time you need to act like one!  However, where creativity is concerned sometimes you need to drop the sober and experienced demeanor and remember the enthusiasm and fun you had when you were 7 years old.  Children are curious and open to the beauty of every new experience; both key tools in creativity.

   If you read magazines and feel interested in or inspired by an article or a picture (for example of how someone has decorated a room) rip it out and keep it in a special folder for creative ideas.  You may not be in a position to act on it straightaway, but when the time comes when you are thinking of redecorating you know where to get your ideas from.

   Whilst there is great value in having routines, every now and then do something different; whether it's taking a different route to work or the shops, or else trying a new meal for dinner.

   Expect to be inspired by other people's creativity.  Remember there is nothing new under the sun.  Most of Shakespeare's plays were based on other people's plots.

   Carry a camera with you wherever you go, and look out for those unexpected moments of beauty.

   The Artist's Way recommends writing morning pages and having a weekly artist's date as basic tools for "creative recovery".

   If you are writing a story don't feel you have to start at the beginning; just write a scene that intrigues you.  Let it flow, rather than forcing what you might not be ready to give form to yet.

   Put more time into whatever you feel passionate about.   How can you tell if you are passionate about something?  Because time passes more quickly when you are doing it!

   If you are thinking you don't have time for creative activities, then you are wrong.  Many of the activities you perform every day are potentially creative, if you don't let yourself fall into a rut. You can be colourful or artistic in the way your dress, in the way you organise your home or desk at work, or how about being more creative in your cooking instead of seeing it as a chore?

Fear Nothing

 

Orchids with Teapots

Fourteenth century England was dominated by war, famine and plague.  It was not a good century in which to be alive.  But after twenty years reflecting on a vision given to her, an English hermit  of those times (Julian of Norwich) wrote down these words: 

 "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

from The Beautiful Life by Simon Parke

The Narnia Code

Science & God?

 
God the Geometer

Any impartial observer looking at today's world could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that modern science and theology are incompatible.  Although the actual percentage of modern scientists who are atheists is in dispute, I think most people would agree that the percentage is higher amongst this elite group than it is amongst the general population. In particular, the atheist v believer debate has polarised around the Darwinian theory of evolution v creationism. 

Science and theology have not always been mutually antagonistic, however.  There was a time when it was acceptable to combine the two in trying to gain an understanding of life, the universe and everything.  (One example that comes to my mind is the Magi of Matthew's gospel who appear to have been astronomers who saw signs from God in the stars).  Certainly the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians saw no reason to keep separate their beliefs in divine beings from their understanding of physics.  Four hundred years before Christ, Plato taught that the physical world was the result of a divine craftsman who formed the universe based on a rational and mathematical plan.  It is from Plato that Science gained its fundamental principle that everything is governed by laws which can be discovered and understood by mankind.

As Christianity spread and took roots throughout most of the known world the study of nature was seen as the "handmaiden of theology", which is to say that gaining more understanding of nature merely brought one closer to God, the creator.  By the thirteenth century, when an interest in biology and botany was on the increase, philosophers believed that increased scientific knowledge would complement theological understanding, help with interpretations to the Scriptures and cause non-believers to be converted.  For many years to come, those who revealed the secrets of nature or came up with scientific philosophies or revelations believed that it was God who had revealed the truth to them, and saw no reason not to see theology as the highest form of science.

In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas argued that theology and the science philosophy of the ancient Greeks should be studied together, and that whilst they might sometimes come to different truths, they could not ultimately contradict each other since both human reason and divine revelation were gifts from God. 

Interestingly the departure from the view that theology and science are complementary was in part thanks to Martin Luther who argued for a separation of the two worlds of faith (central to theology) and reason (central to science).  Taken to the extreme this implies that your Christian beliefs should not impact on your beliefs about the physical world because the two are unrelated.  Over the next five hundred years theologians concentrated more on faith and redemption and less on understanding God's relationship with nature, and scientists distanced themselves from matters of faith in order to maintain a purely rational view of the world.

Of course, as time went by there were some men who were able to unite scientific breakthroughs with faith in God.  In the seventeenth century Isaac Newton published his ground breaking ideas on gravity. He believed he was a servant of God who had been chosen to reveal truths of nature to humankind. He argued that as the sustainer of the physical world God was a necessary presence in the world.

There were also devout theologians who saw God's work particularly clearly in nature, such as the Revd Gilbert White, father of ecology, who in the eighteenth century revolutionised our understanding of the interdependence of plants and wildlife.  And there were ones who were equally passionate about matters science and theological such as Joseph Priestley, the dissenting clergyman who is credited with discovering oxygen.

However, the last five hundred years or so have seen a growing divide between science and theology to the extent that they are considered to either conflict with each other or else belong to such widely differing disciplines that they cannot be compared at all, let alone be compatible (NOMA).

And then into the breach (quietly) rode quantum physics; the study of sub-atomic particles.  As a recent BBC article following the announcement that physicist Bernard d'Espagnat had won The Templeton Prize says:

The theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.

Specifically d'Espagnat argues that quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately "veiled" to us.  In his book Veiled Reality d'Espagnat showed how significant experiments over the past decade have not backed up conventional scientific reasoning.  The answers that quantum physics provide are forcing scientists to question our most basic concepts of space, object and causality.

What is behind the veil?  D’Espagnat talks of a higher power:

I would accept calling it God or divine or Godhead but with the restriction that it cannot be conceptualised for the very reason that this ultimate reality is beyond any concept that we can construct.

Has it taken hundreds of years of scientific exploration to reveal what Job originally told us: that God is beyond our understanding? 

In conclusion, Rabbi Peter Haas says it best in an article about one of the few modern scientist theologians, John Polkinghorne:

The internal debates within the theology-and-science guild will finally be valuable only if they contribute to a realization throughout our culture that we are on the brink of new paradigms for understanding reality, and that those paradigms require the efforts of both scientists and theologians.

Girlhood in Nineteenth Century China

 

I have a particular love for books that show me how women lived in times and cultures that differ greatly from my own.  Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is such a book and I am enjoying learning just what it must have been like to have been a child and a young woman in China in the nineteenth century.

The story is told by Lady Lily Lu, the 80-year-old matriarch of Tongkou village, who, nearing the end of her life, sits down to write her final memoir; one that will be burned at her death. Using nu shu, a secret script designed and kept by women, Lily spends her final years recounting her training as a woman, her longing for love and the friendship of a lifetime.

I haven't finished reading the book yet so I am not writing a review as such, but I wanted to post what I have learned about girlhood at this time.  Of course there was a class system, as there is anywhere, and peasant girls would have a very different life to the upper and middle classes.  The society that Lily grew up in had rigid gender roles.

Whether you are rich or poor, emperor or slave, the domestic sphere is for women and the outside sphere is for men.  Women should not pass beyond the inner chambers in their thoughts or actions.  ...Two Confucian ideals ruled our lives.  The first was the Three Obediences: "When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son."  The second was the Four Virtues, which delineate women's behaviour, speech, carriage, and occupation: "Be chaste and yielding, calm and upright in attitude; be quiet and agreeable in words; be restrained and exquisite in movement; be perfect in handiwork and embroidery."  If girls do not stray from these principles, they will grow into virtuous women.

Many girls had relative freedom (apart from house chores) until they reached about six years of age, when their feet would be bound (younger if from very prosperous households).  The process of foot-binding was hideous and the terrible pain lasted for many months, but it was essential if the girl was to make a good marriage.  One in ten girls died from foot binding and many others were left crippled.  Ideally, if binding was a success, the woman would have a gently swaying walk.  Bound feet were seen as a status symbol, like white skin (implying you could afford to stay out of the sun).  Even now there are some old women in China with bound feet.

Foot size would determine how marriageable I was.  My small feet would be offered as proof to my prospective in-laws of my personal discipline and my ability to endure the pain of childbirth, as well as whatever misfortunes might lie ahead.  My small feet would show the world my obedience to my natal family, particularly to my mother, which would also make a good impression on my future mother-in-law.  The shoes I embroidered would symbolize to my future in-laws my abilities at embroidery and thus to her house learning.

Of course, once a girl's feet were bound her freedom was cut short and she would spend her day helping inside the house (if the family could not afford sufficient servants) and being educated in home making and the womanly arts in the women's garthering room upstairs.  Depending on the prosperity of the family, the unmarried women of the family might all sleep in the women's gathering room.  She would not mix with any males outside her immediate family, which would be quite extended as younger brothers and their families often lived with older brothers.

The girl was able to have friendships with other girls her own age, but these girls were chosen for her not long after the foot binding, and the friendship would usually end once both girls were married.  Well born girls might be able to have one special friend (again, chosen for her) whom she would keep for life; and they would be bound together with as many rites and rituals as a married couple.  Girls always moved to their husbands' families, so that parents were able to enjoy the company of their sons a lot longer than their daughters. 

When she was about eleven she would be betrothed to a boy from another family, with the aid of a matchmaker.  It was not necessary for anyone from the two families to meet.  The girl's family would hope that she would marry into a respectable and prosperous family, but this would depend upon their own class, the beauty of their daughter and the size of her feet.  There would be a continual exchange of gifts on both sides, but it is unlikely that she would meet her intended until the day of the wedding.

In the years before the marriage the girl would be busy making her dowry (quilts, shoes, clothes, presents for her in-laws) as it was considered bad form not to arrive in your new home fully provided for, for many years.  Once she had turned fifteen her hair would be pinned up in the style of a phoenix as a symbol of the coming marriage.  She would marry when she was about seventeen.  Her new family would travel to her home and, after the ceremony, she would be escorted back to her new home.  After four days she would be brought back to her original home.

Following the marriage ceremony the daughter would live at home with her parents, enjoying conjugal visits to her husband's family a few times a year.  She would continue to live with her parents until the end of her first pregnancy.  At this time she would move in permanantly with her husband's family and any official ties to her origianal family would be cut.  However, during certain festivals of the year it was traditional for a wife to return home to visit her parents so, if desirable, contact could remain.  However, a wise new wife would make her mother-in-law into her closest friend as this matriarch would largely be responsible for the happiness, or otherwise, of her new daughter.

Originally posted in July 2007.  I also recommend Peony in Love by the same author, which you can read about in Buffy's Library.

The North East - A Tour Through History Part II

 

You are looking down on the Poison Garden at Alnwick Garden.  Belladonna, mandrake and cannabis are among the toxic substances grown here.  No wonder some of the plants are in cages and all visitors are escorted round.  Alnwick Garden has been built over the last ten years, inspired by the Duchess of Northumbland it covers what was once a derelict site which is now open to the public.

 

Here we are at the top of the Grand Cascade looking down.  Every half-an-hour the water feature explodes with energetic fountains of water spraying everyone around, to the delight of the children!

 

Children also love this giant treehouse which is accessible only via some very wobbly rope bridges. Other attractions at Alnwick Garden include the Cherry Orchard, the Rose Garden and The Serpent Garden.  Work is ongoing on The Garden of the Senses!

 

Traveling further north we arrive at Bamburgh, which was the centre of Christianity in the north of England during the Dark Ages.  This imposing building is Bamburgh Castle, built on the same site by the Normans as the original which was destroyed by Vikings.  Happily the owners during the seventeenth century onwards did a lot of restoration work so it is in a very fine state for such an old castle.  From his castle the King of Northumbria had a fine view across the sea including Holy Island and the Farne Islands.

 

Here is Bamburgh beach, over which the castle towers.  Bamburgh itself is a small village which makes a good base for people exploring Northumberland.  If you are wondering, Northumberland is the northernmost county in England, and because it borders Scotland it has seen a fair amount of fighting.  This is probably why it has more castles than any other county!  It is called "the cradle of Christianity" because of the vital role in the conversion of the British by monks who lived here. 

 

This is one of the Farne Islands, off the coast off Northumberland.  St Cuthbert, a hermit and bishop,  lived here in the seventh century.  He was responsible for introducing laws to protect the wildlife on these islands!  No one lives on these islands now except bird wardens and these buildings are about 600 years old.  The chapel you can see here is on the site of St Cuthbert's oratory.

 

Here are some of the protected birds nesting on the Farne Islands.  (If anyone knows what they are please do say.)  On your boat trip you will hopefully also see grey seals and puffins.  Last year, for the first time, an otter arrived on the islands.  In the 1950s and 1960s the otter population was much diminished by pollution in the UK, but now we have literally cleaned up our act they are making a welcome return!

Here we are at the crossing to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.  This is a tidal island, which is to say that the North Sea covers the causeway when the tide comes in so the island is only accessible at certain hours of the day.  Lindisfarne is the Anglo Saxon name, but it is now referred to as Holy Island.  The name changed following the devastating attacks on the monastery here by the Vikings in the late eighth century, because it was "baptized with the blood of holy men".

 

Lindisfarne was the home of Celtic Christianity and the source of many conversions in northern Britain.  Even now many people travel here for retreats, as well as to do a little historical research or enjoy the wildlife.  In this public garden we can see an example of a celtic cross.

 

We are looking out now from Holy Island; the ships grounded whilst the tide is out.  The island is popular with tourists who come to visit the priory ruins, the castle and just take walks around the island.