Commonplace Entries: Wendell, Dietrich, and Charlotte on the Sacred/Secular Split

coaster – woodburning on cedar for a sweet handcraft (note where the heart is!)

Have you added to your commonplace book lately? Here are 3 of my commonplace entries that deal with the dualism that often besets our lives. This has been a hot topic around here lately.

From Wendell Berry:

I see also that my language has changed. In the earlier poems, I used the words “spirit” and “wild” conventionally and complacently. Later I became unhappy with both. I resolved, first, to avoid “spirit.” This was not because I think the word itself is without meaning, but because I could no longer tolerate the dualism, often constructed in sermons and such as a contest, of spirit and matter. I saw that once this division was made, spirit invariably triumphed to the detriment, to the actual and often irreparable damage, of matter and the material world. Dispensing with the word “spirit” clears the way to imagine a live continuity, in fact and value, between what we call “spiritual” and what we call “material.” – This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems, Introduction p. xxv

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is the reality of God, which has become manifest in Christ in the reality of the world.” –Ethics p. 195

From Charlotte Mason:

“We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.” – principle #20, Vol. 6 p. xxxi

Teaching from Peace,
Nancy