Monday 17 March 2014

In this House of Beauty

Oh, girls. I have been writing about NUNS all day and have only now sent the article in. Oh, I am so behind on the day. I have laundry, soup... Argh!

By the way, if you are still under thirty-five and Single (and not engaged) I implore you on MY KNEES to read Rumor Godden's In This House of Brede. There are still places like Brede. I have friends in one of the models for the Brede enclosure. It is beautiful, beautiful. beautiful. Buy it! Buy it new, secondhand, for Kindle, whatever. Or get it from the library. Just read it because if you haven't read it, you are missing out on who knows how much beauty! Perhaps you will just be edified by a beautiful book. Or perhaps you will be swept into a beautiful life!

(Why do I want to write like Graham Greene when I ought to want to write like Rumor Godden? Absolutely beautiful, truth-telling, non-propagandist Catholic writing!)

Why o why does no-one tell us about how beautiful enclosed life is until it is much too late?


Meanwhile, happy Saint Patrick's Day to the Irish, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Americans and the Canadians. My father is three-quarters Irish-American, so I am wearing green. But there's no point going to the EF today for St. Patrick because I know for the fact the priest mentions St. Patrick in his March 17th Mass only when in Ireland. I once walked all the way from Morningside with a half-Irish-American pal to go to his Mass on March 17, and then not a word breathed to St. Patrick. HOW we glowered afterwards. St. Patrick is not so much of a big deal in Edinburgh. The place to be today is Glasgow. But I don't have time. I must write, launder, cook!

4 comments:

Rose said...

I read In This House of Brede for the first time when I was in my late twenties. I loved it, and remember thinking at the time that if I had felt even remotely called to the religious life then that would have done it for me. I highly recommend it!

Tess said...

In this House of Brede is such a beautiful book. Thank you for recommending it. It did make me consider a religious vocation, which turned out not to be my calling, but the considering was really good for me!

Sheila said...

My husband was moved to tears by that book. First it inspired him to write his college thesis on monasticism -- next I knew it inspired him to become a Benedictine oblate. Powerful book!

(And when you've read it, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is good too.)

MaryJane said...

"A Right to be Merry" is also a beautiful glimpse into the simple beauty of enclosure. It's not exactly the same kind of literature as Godden, but the beauty is there.