It happened this way: in Marie Kondo's "Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" method of de-cluttering one's life, the next thing after going through one's clothes is one's books. I dutifully gathered my books from the four corners of my home. More than one thousand strong, they stood in plies along a wall in the basement, waiting for their day of judgement. As I went through them, remembrances came before my heart. There were hopes for my family and children: books on my philosophy of education with Charlotte Mason; one particular book whose title summed up why I stayed home with my little ones ("The Heart Has It's Reasons"). There were the nature books: wildflower, tree and bird identification, nature journaling, good places for hiking adventures, and more. There was my beloved "Square Foot Gardening." C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer and other besties of my faith. All of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, along with the worn-out "Joy of Cooking." The Pattern Language books. The counseling and psychology ones--lots of those. My books on all things French. The quirky, miscellaneous categories of books. They had shaped my thinking, encouraged me on life's journey, and moved me to dream. (Some of my dreams actually came true. Some of my dreams were shattered). Was I supposed to get rid of all but a chosen few books? This made me sad. They individually sparked joy like little fireflies, and collectively were a warm glow. They had been like friends to me. How do you de-junk your friends? How do you give St. Augustine to the Goodwill?
The answer came one cold, cloudy afternoon--the kind of afternoon when the local bookstore calls one's name with the promise of getting lost in the stacks, finding something wonderful to read, and settling down with a nice warm drink. My daughter and I answered the call. We wandered apart, but she came back soon, like a retriever who found its duck with ease. She held a charming little white volume with a pink and blue Scandinavian design on the cover and the strange word "Hygge." It turned out to be a book that solved the problem of books. But of course!
You may very well have heard of hygge; all over the internet it has been. Hygge is some sort of coziness that the self-reported happiest people in the world, the Danish people, have embraced. Hygge generally comes along with winter and fireplaces and cocoa and soft woolly socks, although one can "hygge" any time. If you like word-history, hygge may have come from an old Norwegian word that connotes well-being. The Old Norse word "hugge" means "to comfort." There was a word that was used in the sixteenth century, Old English, "hugge" -- "to embrace, to hug." Nice word, huh?
This provoked me to think about what it is we long for when we arrange our surroundings to create an atmosphere of comfort and well-being. There is the Christian concept of Shalom: being whole and well. It is the soul's feeling at home; comfortable, contented in this world we were made for, which paradoxically is not our true home. Do we not desire joyfulness with tranquility? To feel blessedly happy? To be "surprised by joy," even, as C.S. Lewis put it?
This quest for joy has been an undercurrent in human history. One author, Christopher Alexander, writes of a certain Quality Without a Name. He emphasizes feeling alive, being free, and being deeply who you are.
Bob Dylan alludes to this, perhaps, by pressing the question from another angle. "How does it feel... to be on your own... with no direction home... like a complete unknown...like a rolling stone?" Hm, how does that feel? Cold, stark, empty; no home, even... What is the connection between the concrete elements of home, the being together, the hot cocoa, fuzzy socks, a book in hand and a fire in the wood stove --- and the most real, deep longings of our heart for peace, beauty, and belonging?
I think we want something more than how we feel when things are just "nice." On this side of heaven, embracing coziness for itself becomes a watered-down, milk-toast affair when we believe this is all there is. We numb ourselves to the ache of our hearts, which have been hurt so badly. We ignore the ache of living in a fallen place in the universe, and we are the less for it. We sell out for little pleasures, right now.
When we remember the ache for something beyond this place, our hearts are moved, and we go deeper. In the Scandinavian way, the Christmas season is the ultimate hygge, and it is a time of tradition and togetherness. I remember the wonder and excitement of Christmas as a child. Grandma had a tinsel Christmas tree, which changed colors by a light that shone on it. She got red velvet outfits for all of us, her grandchildren. My cousins and I, all dressed in red velvet: we belonged to each other. We truly belonged, in spite of the pain and dysfunction that our family knew. We had a home at Grandma's. We were not on our own, like little rolling stones...We will never be together like that again, as children at Christmas in red velvet. So I ache. I want to be with them again, to see them, to know them, to feel at home with them as we did in the warmth of Grandma's care. Christmas lights and red velvet, the homely hygge of those times, was that not a little taste of the true Home?
There have been the summer evenings. The air is milky-warm. We rock in rocking chairs on the porch, listening to the cicadas and the occasional bull-frog's deep, deep croak. Again, I am there, together with dear ones. We belong to each other. We truly belong, in spite of the pain and dysfunction our family knows. We are together in this wonderful moment of time, and times like this always end. Winter will come. Maybe there will still be wonderful moments in our lives that we will embrace with joy. The winter of our lives will eventually arrive, however, and we will grow old. We will begin to die, one by one, and be buried in the ground by the others who are left... To know this, to feel our mortality in the face of these moments of the grace of life, will bring an ache with it. The moments of quiet joy, embraced along with the ache of knowing they will end--in that do we not realize, in amazement, there really, truly is the Shalom of Heaven itself? A Shalom we are, right now, just tasting a little sip of?
Did I still give my books away? Yes, a few of them. Most of them remain. The most precious ones now reside in lovely wooden bookcases in a room I might call The Library. Or maybe the Den, like Grandma's house. They do not spark joy like a firecracker, but they glow in their own soft way. They remind me of a Home I have yet to live in. For ever and for always.
This provoked me to think about what it is we long for when we arrange our surroundings to create an atmosphere of comfort and well-being. There is the Christian concept of Shalom: being whole and well. It is the soul's feeling at home; comfortable, contented in this world we were made for, which paradoxically is not our true home. Do we not desire joyfulness with tranquility? To feel blessedly happy? To be "surprised by joy," even, as C.S. Lewis put it?
This quest for joy has been an undercurrent in human history. One author, Christopher Alexander, writes of a certain Quality Without a Name. He emphasizes feeling alive, being free, and being deeply who you are.
Bob Dylan alludes to this, perhaps, by pressing the question from another angle. "How does it feel... to be on your own... with no direction home... like a complete unknown...like a rolling stone?" Hm, how does that feel? Cold, stark, empty; no home, even... What is the connection between the concrete elements of home, the being together, the hot cocoa, fuzzy socks, a book in hand and a fire in the wood stove --- and the most real, deep longings of our heart for peace, beauty, and belonging?
I think we want something more than how we feel when things are just "nice." On this side of heaven, embracing coziness for itself becomes a watered-down, milk-toast affair when we believe this is all there is. We numb ourselves to the ache of our hearts, which have been hurt so badly. We ignore the ache of living in a fallen place in the universe, and we are the less for it. We sell out for little pleasures, right now.
When we remember the ache for something beyond this place, our hearts are moved, and we go deeper. In the Scandinavian way, the Christmas season is the ultimate hygge, and it is a time of tradition and togetherness. I remember the wonder and excitement of Christmas as a child. Grandma had a tinsel Christmas tree, which changed colors by a light that shone on it. She got red velvet outfits for all of us, her grandchildren. My cousins and I, all dressed in red velvet: we belonged to each other. We truly belonged, in spite of the pain and dysfunction that our family knew. We had a home at Grandma's. We were not on our own, like little rolling stones...We will never be together like that again, as children at Christmas in red velvet. So I ache. I want to be with them again, to see them, to know them, to feel at home with them as we did in the warmth of Grandma's care. Christmas lights and red velvet, the homely hygge of those times, was that not a little taste of the true Home?
There have been the summer evenings. The air is milky-warm. We rock in rocking chairs on the porch, listening to the cicadas and the occasional bull-frog's deep, deep croak. Again, I am there, together with dear ones. We belong to each other. We truly belong, in spite of the pain and dysfunction our family knows. We are together in this wonderful moment of time, and times like this always end. Winter will come. Maybe there will still be wonderful moments in our lives that we will embrace with joy. The winter of our lives will eventually arrive, however, and we will grow old. We will begin to die, one by one, and be buried in the ground by the others who are left... To know this, to feel our mortality in the face of these moments of the grace of life, will bring an ache with it. The moments of quiet joy, embraced along with the ache of knowing they will end--in that do we not realize, in amazement, there really, truly is the Shalom of Heaven itself? A Shalom we are, right now, just tasting a little sip of?
Did I still give my books away? Yes, a few of them. Most of them remain. The most precious ones now reside in lovely wooden bookcases in a room I might call The Library. Or maybe the Den, like Grandma's house. They do not spark joy like a firecracker, but they glow in their own soft way. They remind me of a Home I have yet to live in. For ever and for always.
