Leisure: The Basis of Culture {Chapter 1}

Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper

Last night, on the way home from the grocery store, I was bemoaning the fact that my copy of Leisure: The Basis of Culture had not yet arrived. The book club begins tomorrow! I explained. I’m going to be behind right from the start!

I told you I saw the UPS man today, Mom! replied a little-boy voice from the backest of back seats.

My, that little boy comes in handy.

Thankfully, the first chapter is quite short. Unless of course the entire first essay is the first chapter, in which event I’ve gone about this entirely the wrong way. But I’m willing to take that risk.

Things to Learn

Here is probably the cornerstone of the chapter, making it possible to set the stage for a type of leisure that is not akin to sloth:

Leisure means school. Well, sort of. Not any school I’ve ever seen {except perhaps, on occasion, the one in my living room}. Here’s the quote:

The Greek word for leisure {σχολή} is the origin of Latin schola, German Schule, English school. The name of the institutions of education and learning means “leisure.”

Questions I Asked

I have a number of questions rattling around in my head right now. I apologize that I have many questions and few answers:

• Is Pieper going to leave room for having work that one truly enjoys? He quotes Max Weber talking about living for one’s work, and then explains that this is upside-down. Though we all frown upon what we call workaholism, surely there must be a place for loving the work we do.
• Can a person in a non-Sabbatarian culture even understand all of this? I ask this from within such a culture. If, by “celebrating” the Sabbath, you mean “take a long nap on Sunday afternoon,” well, then, we are on the same page. But if you mean doing this, or something more deliberate and meaningful, consistently and intentionally, then my own family fails the test. Ken Myers brought up Sabbath-keeping a lot in All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes and a friend even linked me to a book in the comments, and you know what? I never pursued it.

  The thing that has always gotten me is that the Sabbath was built right into the perfect world of Eden, so acting like Jesus eliminated Sabbath-keeping is probably short-sighted.

  Not that I know what I’m talking about here.

  Moving on.

• Can one really learn anything without the time to reflect upon the subject at hand? Si and I had the opportunity to experience a teacher who was the intellectual equivalent of the Tazmanian Devil. The man was a whirlwind. He was teaching on various doctrines, and I, with 2/3 of a seminary degree, was still holding on for dear life, he was plowing so quickly. I assume the other students were, like us, able to pull something or other out of the class and think about it later.

  Which begs my next question.

• If we can only learn so much at one time, what is it that drives us to try and teach more than this?
• Why do we insist on covering all of the material on our list, even when the students’ minds have already shut off for the time being?
• Can we say we are teaching according to the nature of the child if we treat them like little garbage disposals into which we dump every last scrap in our textbooks?

And Lastly…

How does the concept of leisurely learning interact with how we do church, and how we do Sunday School?

A Little Sunday School Story

I went to a lot of Sunday School growing up. For the most part, I don’t remember much of any of it, other than that I was incredibly nervous about going {can you say introvert?}, and I always thought that most of it was rather silly in a pointless sort of way. I don’t mean that I was prideful about it, but more that it made me a little uncomfortable, like I just didn’t fit into that environment.

But I do remember one Sunday. Pastor Brent came to “teach” my class because my teacher was sick and there was no substitute. At least, I think that is why he was there. I remember that he played some game with us that got us to be quiet like mice. It was a game I actually liked, where all the noise sort of drifted away from the room.

And then he opened a book, and he read to us.

That was the first time I ever heard The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I don’t remember anything else about that day. I don’t know if he read for the entire class, or only read a chapter. I don’t remember if I ever got to hear the rest of the story {in the near future, I mean}. All I remember is that I was completely captivated, and I loved Pastor Brent for bothering to read such a book to a class of second-graders.

Do you see? We sat quietly, and he just read.

There were no gimmicks.

No flannel graphs.

No charts or graphs.

No illustrations.

No anything other than his voice, the story washing over us, floating about in the room.

In my mind, that was the only time in my childhood I was ever “fed” at church.

This is not to say that Bible stories cannot feed, but the way they are often presented, as cute little moral tales, does not captivate, does not enlighten, does not feed.

The purpose of this is not to insult Sunday School, but rather to raise a very important question, or rather a set of questions, inspired as much by my CiRCE CDs as by this book: How can we take the necessity of leisure for learning and incorporate it into Sunday School–or any other type of Christian education–so that we actually feed His sheep? Is the traditional methodology surrounding Sunday School fitting for the nature of a child, or for an adult human?

The big question is: How do we keep our children soft when it comes to the things of the Lord? Perhaps thinking through these things might show us a Better Way.

Go to Cindy’s for more book club entries.