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Peru, N. Durand rscj
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Kenwood, Albany, New York, July 2005
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article here .
Leisure is a value whose roots go deep into scripture, spirituality, and contemporary society. Mindful of this rich heritage, I want to consider four aspects of leisure as a value in our contemplative and communal life: relaxing our bodies, resting our minds, connecting leisure and prayer, and connecting leisure and community life.1
Let us look first, however, at how scripture speaks about leisure. Scripture celebrates God’s delight in us and our delight in God. Describing wisdom as creator, the author of Proverbs writes: “I was daily God’s delight, rejoicing before God always, rejoicing in God’s inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (NRSV, Proverbs 8:30). Nan Merrill translates the line in Ps. 37: “Take delight in the Beloved, enjoy the bountiful gifts of Love” (Psalms for Praying, Ps. 37:4). Delight fulfills for me an aspect of leisure.
Then there is the great wealth of spirituality. To focus on our own Society’s heritage, I want to touch on the place of rest according to Madeleine Sophie Barat, RSCJ, and Janet Erskine Stuart, RSCJ. For Madeleine Sophie, interior spirit was essential: “the continual remembrance of the presence of God . . . an immediate dependence upon grace and the secret impulses of the Holy Spirit.”2 This understanding or grasp of interior spirit from the point of view of leisure is an intentional value for our contemplative and communal life.
And how did Madeleine Sophie’s life reveal this value? Even with a strong work ethic, Sophie took time for rest after an illness, overwork, or a crisis.3 Her times of retreat were restful. Spending so much time in travel, she learned to stop along the way and enjoy people and places, for example, her family, Pauline Perdrau’s mother, and the children of the Petit Pensionnat in Paris. According to Phil Kilroy, RSCJ, in her biography of Madeleine Sophie, Sophie found an opportunity for rest during her illnesses when she could reflect, read, and consider her next step: “The illnesses, which were real, actually gave her contemplative space to work at another level and achieve insight and courage for the path ahead.”4 She likewise urged her religious to value rest.5
Madeleine Sophie rested by turning inward and deepening her relationship with Christ, in contentment and in crisis. As Betsy Walsh, RSCJ, put it: “I think that is what she means by the interior life, to be more aware of him.”6 Betsy believes that Sophie suffered intensely so that the Society of the Sacred Heart could survive, at times when schism was really threatened. Since all is present to God, our reality as Religious of the Sacred Heart, our lives and who we are, was present in her suffering. We are a part of her life, of course, unknown to her.7
Janet Erskine Stuart seized every moment of constantly interrupted rest to write her stories.8 Her interpretation of the need for rest was change of activity, not necessarily change of place or idleness: “The happiest holidays were those spent in the pursuit of some favourite hobby or study. In this spirit community holidays were to her a means of making progress.”9 She encouraged her religious to use holiday time to improve their minds: “congé reunion questions, essays, her plays and the like.”10
Margaret Williams, RSCJ, described RSCJ spirituality as “inwardness for the outgoing.”11 Leisure is a way to develop inwardness. The constantly renewed choice to relax our bodies and minds can contribute to our discovering and revealing God’s personal love for us.
Now I want to reflect about contemporary society and an image from a recent movie The Notebook, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, in which Allie and Noah at age seventeen enjoy a summer romance in 1937 in Seabrook, South Carolina. After she tells him about all the tutoring and classes she is taking, he replies, “I’m just wondering what you do for fun.” Finally she says “Painting. I love to paint.” Leisure is a powerful way to forge a wedge in our workaholic culture.
Seven years later, engaged to another man, Allie walks into her fiancé’s office unannounced and says “I’m not painting. I used to paint.” Then she tells him that she needs to take a couple of days at Seabrook and clear her mind. She sees the house that Noah has built and is dumbfounded to realize that he built it as she had wished and as he had promised.
Can this house be an image of each one’s heart, the house that God longs to build within us? Leisure is one way to become comfortable with our hearts. It is a way to renew our choice to let God be all of our life, our whole life, to create an open space within where God can act and which only God can fill. To take “useless time” that is never recorded on our calendar is important.
Leisure is more than a definite time or programmed activities: it is a mode of being that is similar to the way contemplation is a mode of being: while enjoying leisure and while being open to the Spirit, we are present in a calm and relaxed manner. The leisure mode is a tranquil quality of presence that is marked by peace, joy, and freedom. It has something in common with what we call the sabbath mode, the vacation mode, and with what I love to call the retreat mode, something about slowing down and not initiating. Therefore, I want to develop two points in my remarks: leisure as a value and the leisure mode as a dimension of our contemplative and communal life. Let us begin with the question:"How do we relax and renew our bodies and our minds?”
Annice Callahan rscj
Province of the United States
1. I want to thank several who helped with the preparation of this manuscript: Anne Leonard, RSCJ, for detailed information on Society references and skillful editorial assistance; Claire Kondolf, RSCJ, for its shortened length; Fran Gimber, RSCJ, and Margaret Phelan, RSCJ, for detailed information on Society references and invaluable suggestions for revision; and Linda Hayward, RSCJ, and Marianna Torrano, RSCJ, for their substantive comments and questions.
2. See Madeleine Sophie Barat, Conférence: Sur L’ésprit intérieur,” à Jette, août 1844, Conférences de la Vénérable Mère Madeleine Sophie Barat, Fondatrice de la Société du Sacré-Coeur, Tome 1, No. LVII (Roehampton: Society of the Sacred Heart, 1900), p. 367. I am indebted to Anne Leonard, RSCJ, for finding this reference, e-mail, May 10, 2005.
3. Phil Kilroy, RSCJ, e-mail, April 20, 2005.
4. Phil Kilroy, RSCJ, Madeleine Sophie Barat 1779-1865 A Life (New York: Paulist, 2000), 100.
5. For example, she advised one RSCJ to stop off in Paris, see her on business, and take time to rest (See Correspondence Sophie Barat et Stanislas Verhulst, Lettre 8, Paris, 23 avril 1856, in Phil Kilroy, RSCJ, same e-mail, April 20, 2005). She advised another RSCJ to honor her need for some rest after having been superior of a community (See Correspondence Sophie Barat et Blanche de Lannoy, Lettre 59, Paris,1er septembre 1856, in Phil Kilroy, RSCJ, e-mail, April 29).
8. See Francis Cardinal Bourne, A Preface,” to Janet Erskine Stuart, Highways and By-ways in the Spiritual Life (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1923), vi. This reference was sent to me by Anne Leonard, RSCJ, e-mail, April 28, 2005.
9. Maud Monahan, RSCJ, Life and Letters of Janet Erskine Stuart (London: Longmans, 1960), 199 (=LL). Stuart had “the soul of the sportsman and naturalist”(LL 74). Her horseback riding as a girl gave her many happy hours on the hills, an empathy with RSCJ who loved sports, and a vocabulary for describing our life, for example: “You must be thoroughbreds, Sisters” (LL 75). She revealed the secret of her “all-embracing love of nature” when she wrote: “We love beauty of scenery, of form, of art, of gifts of mind and talent . . . because God is there” (LL 208).
10. Fran Gimber, RSCJ, e-mail, March 25, 2005.
11. Margaret Williams, RSCJ, The Society of the Sacred Heart: History of a Spirit 1800-1975 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1978), 301. I am indebted to Barb Quinn, RSCJ, for having pointed this out to me.
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