JOHN WRITES:

Thank you for your excellent piece on “The Distracted Society.” You did a great service by providing such an informative and enlightening synopsis of the thought of Josef Pieper. 

I think the key is the line you quoted: “Worship is the fountainhead of leisure.” Those who have made our society into what it is today have a purpose to all the busyness that keeps us continually occupied. It is to make certain that we never have a chance to remember that we have a soul. “Leisure” and all it entails such as quiet, peace and rest are essential for interior recollection. For the same reason these things are frightening and painful to those who do not want to be reminded that they have a soul. The reality of our soul, its past history, its current state, its eternal destiny, these are things that cannot be contemplated while we are being bombarded with external stimuli. 

Much of what you write about and are striving for in your pursuit of true femininity can perhaps be summed up in the phrase interior recollection. “When to those sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past.” Who has time for this in our modern world? Without peace, quiet and rest we cannot cultivate our souls, but the modern man and woman for whom souls are something unnecessary, or even a positive hindrance, fear above all else those moments without distraction when the sad reality of their souls, the existence of which they deny, presses in upon them.

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing.

I mentioned the cyclists in expensive spandex who ride by my house on Sundays. The expression on their faces is that of people driven to distraction, hurtling away from themselves. I have seen the same expression on hikers in the mountains who appear utterly goal-oriented, as if climbing a mountain is just one more form of work. They appear to have lost the ability to experience wonder or to relax. I compare them to a man I once saw sitting for hours in a lawn chair before a mountain scene, smoking cigarettes. He was not physically fit, but he sat there in a state of deep awareness. No rich man, with yachts and private castles, could possess more than this man in his lawn chair. He possessed leisure and the capacity for wonder.

You say, “These things are frightening and painful to those who do not want to be reminded they have a soul.” As Aristotle said, the man who has not led a good life despises solitude because it forces him to confront how he has lived. The more sinful and greedy a society becomes, the busier it is. People justify this busyness by saying it is economically necessary, when in fact it has become a sort of spiritual necessity.

How can we seek forgiveness if we do not recollect what we have done? 

It is gratifying that you understand my message. The destruction of the homemaking role, as well as the sort of materialism that drives a man to work himself to death for a big house and expensive school tuitions, leaves everyone – man, woman and child – with less time to recollect themselves and to apprehend that internal reality, which is our only doorway to God, to truth, to beauty and to virtue.

 People dismissively call this conflict over home the “mommy wars.” It is a deadly serious battle.

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