A Stake in the Ground
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A Stake in the Ground
As the moon waxes to its fullness, Kate explores the unforeseen consequences of this decision, to set aside one day of the week for rest and renewal.
Transcript for the podcast Tide to the Moon
Episode 2: A Stake in the Ground
[MUSIC]
Host Kate Lawrence
This podcast is published at the moment of the full moon which was 6.17 pm on Friday 18 March, 2022.
This moment was itself in the shadow of another moment, the Autumn Equinox which occurred just 56 hours and ten minute later.
The Autumn equinox is one of the quarter days, one of the four day that mark the earths cycle round the sun - the two solstices are when the days are longest of shertes and the equinoxes are when night and day are equal.
They’re significant markers in the Earth’s year and I'm gonna be very happy to explore more about them as this podcast evolves. They have been honored and celebrated by humans for millennia and many of the Christian holy days have come from the pagan celebrations around these days.
This is particularly obvious when we remember that Easter, which is coming up next month, is always held on the weekend closest to the full moon after the Equinox, which is why it changes dates every year.
That most of us have no idea that easter is connected not only to the full moon but also to the equinox is an indication of how much further we are from connecting our lives with nature’s cycles than our ancestors were.
MUSIC
G’day, This is Tide to the Moon where we slide our minds between sheets of secular and sacred, story and idea, sacrament and profanity, and we wait and hope for grace .
My name is Kate lawrence and I am your host
One of my greatest joys is when one seemingly small decision to take an action, gives up a myriad of other magical, unforeseen and delightful consequences.
For example we moved to the forest town of Macedon for the love of the natural environment, but within months I realized the joys of a small community were every bit as appealing as the forest.
Of course we also realized it was an incredibly high bushfire risk area which was not such an appealing unforeseen consequence.
Or take the making of this podcast, where my original motivation was to give myself some accountability for the experiment of one day a week for rest, and now I find this action is having the most profound impact on my impetus to write, which in turn develops and deepens my thinking.
And the other night, after dark, I was walking across my backyard and I caught the moon looking at me and when I looked at her, I could tell I there was less than a week to go before I had to finish this episode. She was like a calendar just hanging up there in the sky.
Mow maybe I thought I’d have a greater awareness of the lunar cycle by publishing on the new and full moons, but to literally read the moon as a time marker was a tiny, thrilling moment I hadn’t anticipated.
And now I am discovering a host of unexpected consequences of this line in the sand, stake in the ground, call it what you will of a day of rest, this commitment to protecting Sunday from the ordinary, so much so that it is becoming the centre pole of the tent of my life.
MUSIC
Have I mentioned that I am a pretty unstructured person? I think I have, but apparently you can’t mention things too often on podcasts.
So I’m pretty unstructured or at least this is the story I’ve been telling myself ever since I met and started living with my partner Adrian, who liked to say that in our relationship his role was to bring order to chaos.
But actually, unbeknownst even to me, I have harboured one vaguely followed routine -
I do know that is a contradiction in terms, but all of us are a bunch of living contradictions
Anyway I have a mental attachment - the physical action of practicing this routine is less attached - to the idea of getting up on a Saturday morning, and powering through a bunch of chores. Then once they're done the rest of the weekend is free.
I don’t know when I developed this loosey goosey habit, and I was far from consistent but it was embedded enough to feel like a good rhythm to the working week.
And even when I had kids and was at home a lot during the week, the Saturday morning time where everyone was up and about, getting the house clean and doing some outside jobs, where the kids could all contribute, felt really good.
It felt really good to me that is.
Now Adrian, he was a man born with a deep need and possibly a love of order.
We were as night is to day in our approaches to structure.
Take for example our schemes for doing the laundry
Before I had children my washing was done at totally random intervals and it would sit for equally random lengths of time in the machine after the cyle, only remembered by the damp and mouldy smell or when I went to do another load and saw the forgotten clothes which now needed to be re-washed.
I was a little more focussed after I had kids but still with no routine.
Adrian on the other hand, had a washing regime, bordering on military:
shirts every four days
other tops every three days,
Pants, shorts, pyjamas, undies and socks every five days
towels every second saturday,
bedding every second sunday.
This routine was set in stone, it was so rigid that if he came home late I would find him sitting up until 1, 2 or even 3am waiting for the washing to finish, because it had to be hung out as soon as the cycle had finished to avoid ironing.
The washing regime wasn’t the only routine Adrian had.
There were rules for what clothes to wear depending on the predicted temperature,
And what TV shows to watch and
And when to open the windows and when to turn the heater on
He went to bed exactly 8 hours before he had to get up which on the weekend he set as 10am which meant he didn't go to bed until 2am.
Many of these regimes were not conducive to life with small children and I happened to have two of them when we first met, and then we had a third two years later.
So, despite being in love I found Adrian’s rules frustrating and I fluctuated wildly in my responses
I argued, cajoled, reasoned, critiqued, suggested and railed at the idiocy of his ways. I laughed and cried, yelled and pleaded, all to no avail. The systems were the anchor for him and his life, let go of the system and who knew what might happen, and if I dictated what and how he was to do something and where was his dignity and sovereignty?
So switched, I allowed, accepted, I released; he was loveable and funny and steady, I could let go of having it done ‘my way’. I adjusted my domestic expectations, I wanted peace and his happiness, I wanted a partnership and to share the load.
And he did do stuff. If it was on his schedule it would get done, But if it wasn’t on the schedule, it didn’t even exists, he didn’t even see it and he was not at all attracted by the idea of saturday morning chores.
He wanted to get out of bed at 10 and get dressed at 12, and then put some washing on.
We tried to move closer to each other, he agree to Saturday working bees,
and we did them for a while
but it was painful, for everyone.
I could have kept going and doing them , for myself
But I carried an inherited bitterness, that if others are doing nothing while I am working there is something terribly wrong,
and I either stop working or become an unpleasant whirling nightmare of harshness.
So eventually I let it slip, this idea of saturday chores.
[Music]
Until, on that first Sunday, a few weeks ago, years now after Adrian died, when I introduced a sacred sabbath into my week and I lolled around relishing in the relaxation, at some point in the day I noticed the dining room table and it was a mess.
One end of the table was strewn with my work papers, and the rest of the table was fulfilling its role as the general dumping ground for all things that require that little bit of extra effort to put somewhere.
It wasn't too bad, a little bit of effort would have it sorted,
and I had ruled that anything more than bare minimum housework out of bounds on Sunday, so the table remained as it was. But it niggled me.
So the following Saturday I was filled with new intention and purpose.
While the day was fairly full, I made sure I did some of the tasks I often did on Sunday
I did the meal planning and shopping,
I made sure Sunday dinner was easy and I tidied the dining room table, did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen the night before.
And last week which was last in the waxing moon, Saturday was totally transformed.
I vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen, mopped the floor, put out the compost and the recycling.
I did a meal plan, the weekly shop and three loads of washing.
The house looked and felt wonderful - clean and clear and peaceful.
And I remembered the pleasure of this rhythm, that I had let slip.
It felt like I’d come home,
by planting a stake in the ground of sunday,
the ripples outwards mean that now Saturday is a day of preparation for Sunday
and that means more structure all round.
Of course other weeks barely anything’s gonna get done on Saturday in preparation for Sunday,
I am not so wedded to cleanliness as to sacrifice other activities, but the consciousness that Sunday is different, its sacred, means I will turn my mind to how to manage whats needs to be done and how to take some small action to honour the space, to prepare even one corner to rest my eye upon, so that the house is at least one step up from what it might have been if Sunday was just another ordinary day.
MUSIC
Outro: Thanks for listening to ‘Tide to the Moon’’. If you like this podcast please rate and review us on itunes or wherever you listen, and tell other people about it. And if you have any ideas, suggestions, requests, comments or feedback, I would love to hear from you.
This podcast is made on the lands of the Gunum Willam Balluk, at the foot of Mt Macedon, 65 km north of Melbourne, Australia. This podcast is a production of Story Ground, and me, Kate Lawrence.
