Some Tips for Planning Your Summer Vacation - Part 2
(Originally posted June 26, 2014)
We continue now with our look at a kind of recreation that might make vacation something more refreshing, more lasting, than just a few days of separation from our ordinary lives. Last time we talked about "getting away" from our work. But vacation also takes us away - or somewhat takes us away - from everyday life. An example of this is local news. I don't know about you, but when I take a vacation some distance from my home, I don't check in on our local news. So there's always a surprise or two when we get back - not that it's typically anything earth-shattering.
Anyway, back to recreation. So here you are, on vacation, away from work, away from all your other everyday surroundings. But instead of simply seeking any old activity done for enjoyment when one is not working (the primary definition of "recreation"), instead you engage in an action or process of creating something again (the secondary, sort of "deeper" definition of "recreation"). Last time I used the example of, rather than reading a romance novel, reading some GK Chesterton. I picked Chesterton for two specific reasons. First, he's a brilliant writer, no matter the subject of his writing; second, he's got a remarkable ability to see what we might call the "ordinary" in an interesting, really quite new light. A startling example - and only one among so many - would be his comment about what today has become a hot topic: religious liberty. About 100 year ago, he wrote: "Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it."
Chesterton said this an entire century before the latest religious liberty controversies, most specifically those associated with Obamacare. Indeed, without either Chesterton, or some interest and understanding of history, you might think that the whole issue of religious liberty we face today was somehow created by the requirement that health care plans offer contraceptive and abortion services. And this Chestertonian eye-opener is merely two short sentences from a man who wrote around 80 books, 200 short stories, several hundred poems, several plays and 4,000 (yes, thousand) essays. Imagine what sort of recreation one might experience from reading a single book by Chesterton during a vacation. Indeed, so influential were and are (for those who take the trouble today to read him) Chesterton's writings, delivering the homily at his funeral in June 1936 Ronald Knox said, "All his generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton."
And Chesterton is but one jewel (albeit a particularly beautiful and valuable one) in the treasure trove of Catholic writing, music and art available to anyone who makes even the slightest effort. You see, it hardly takes much effort to access the wonders which Holy Mother Church has in store for us - the key phrase during vacation being "slightest effort." Imagine how refreshed and relaxed in not simply body and mind, but also in spirit, you will be by taking a slice of your vacation in such glorious recreation.
To be perfectly clear here, I'm not suggesting you turn your vacation into a course of study on the works of Chesterton. Don't cancel kayaking, swimming, hiking, dining out, lounging by the ocean or the pool slathered in sun-tan lotion with perhaps a cool drink, gazing out through your sunglasses at the care-free world of fellow vacationers. You will certainly refresh your mind and body, especially if you can remain relatively detached from the pressures of the work world and the typical concerns of ordinary living. Setting all these aside for a few days won't cause your world to collapse, and doing so will buck you up a bit for the inevitable return to the daily grind. It's just that adding something like Chesterton to the usual vacation fare will refresh your soul in a manner that mere physical and mental relaxation could never accomplish.
Again, reading Chesterton is just one suggestion. I only used this one example because I happen to think - or perhaps I should say know - that any time spent with Chesterton leave me a better man. And reading specifically Catholic works isn't necessarily the only way to enrich your soul. For example, during one time of respite, I spent good quality time with The Met: One Hundred Years of Grand Opera. As an opera lover, the increased knowledge of the history of New York's great Metropolitan Opera company - one of the world's greatest - added so much to my subsequent appreciation of the great art form, even enhancing my appreciation of specific performances we subsequently attended. While there's nothing specifically Catholic about the Met Opera, great art does put us in touch with the Beautiful, and that surely is specifically Catholic.
(A subject for another time might be how Catholic sensibility not only enhances the Beautiful, but may actually be essential to our really plummeting the depths of the greatest works of art.)
So consider taking a slice of your vacation time and filling it with something spiritually enriching. You will return from vacation re-created, in the richer sense of that word.
We continue now with our look at a kind of recreation that might make vacation something more refreshing, more lasting, than just a few days of separation from our ordinary lives. Last time we talked about "getting away" from our work. But vacation also takes us away - or somewhat takes us away - from everyday life. An example of this is local news. I don't know about you, but when I take a vacation some distance from my home, I don't check in on our local news. So there's always a surprise or two when we get back - not that it's typically anything earth-shattering.
Anyway, back to recreation. So here you are, on vacation, away from work, away from all your other everyday surroundings. But instead of simply seeking any old activity done for enjoyment when one is not working (the primary definition of "recreation"), instead you engage in an action or process of creating something again (the secondary, sort of "deeper" definition of "recreation"). Last time I used the example of, rather than reading a romance novel, reading some GK Chesterton. I picked Chesterton for two specific reasons. First, he's a brilliant writer, no matter the subject of his writing; second, he's got a remarkable ability to see what we might call the "ordinary" in an interesting, really quite new light. A startling example - and only one among so many - would be his comment about what today has become a hot topic: religious liberty. About 100 year ago, he wrote: "Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it."
Chesterton said this an entire century before the latest religious liberty controversies, most specifically those associated with Obamacare. Indeed, without either Chesterton, or some interest and understanding of history, you might think that the whole issue of religious liberty we face today was somehow created by the requirement that health care plans offer contraceptive and abortion services. And this Chestertonian eye-opener is merely two short sentences from a man who wrote around 80 books, 200 short stories, several hundred poems, several plays and 4,000 (yes, thousand) essays. Imagine what sort of recreation one might experience from reading a single book by Chesterton during a vacation. Indeed, so influential were and are (for those who take the trouble today to read him) Chesterton's writings, delivering the homily at his funeral in June 1936 Ronald Knox said, "All his generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton."
And Chesterton is but one jewel (albeit a particularly beautiful and valuable one) in the treasure trove of Catholic writing, music and art available to anyone who makes even the slightest effort. You see, it hardly takes much effort to access the wonders which Holy Mother Church has in store for us - the key phrase during vacation being "slightest effort." Imagine how refreshed and relaxed in not simply body and mind, but also in spirit, you will be by taking a slice of your vacation in such glorious recreation.
To be perfectly clear here, I'm not suggesting you turn your vacation into a course of study on the works of Chesterton. Don't cancel kayaking, swimming, hiking, dining out, lounging by the ocean or the pool slathered in sun-tan lotion with perhaps a cool drink, gazing out through your sunglasses at the care-free world of fellow vacationers. You will certainly refresh your mind and body, especially if you can remain relatively detached from the pressures of the work world and the typical concerns of ordinary living. Setting all these aside for a few days won't cause your world to collapse, and doing so will buck you up a bit for the inevitable return to the daily grind. It's just that adding something like Chesterton to the usual vacation fare will refresh your soul in a manner that mere physical and mental relaxation could never accomplish.
Again, reading Chesterton is just one suggestion. I only used this one example because I happen to think - or perhaps I should say know - that any time spent with Chesterton leave me a better man. And reading specifically Catholic works isn't necessarily the only way to enrich your soul. For example, during one time of respite, I spent good quality time with The Met: One Hundred Years of Grand Opera. As an opera lover, the increased knowledge of the history of New York's great Metropolitan Opera company - one of the world's greatest - added so much to my subsequent appreciation of the great art form, even enhancing my appreciation of specific performances we subsequently attended. While there's nothing specifically Catholic about the Met Opera, great art does put us in touch with the Beautiful, and that surely is specifically Catholic.
(A subject for another time might be how Catholic sensibility not only enhances the Beautiful, but may actually be essential to our really plummeting the depths of the greatest works of art.)
So consider taking a slice of your vacation time and filling it with something spiritually enriching. You will return from vacation re-created, in the richer sense of that word.
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