Leisure: The Basis of Culture {Chapter 5}

I liked this last section of the first essay. In it, Pieper comes full circle, bringing us back to some of his original questions. He begins by asking whether the realm of leisure can be saved by an appeal to humanism, which is, he says, an appeal to a humanum. His conclusion, to those of us who Believe, is probably not all that surprising: No, it cannot.

Man, isolated from God and religion, is not sufficient to rescue the realm of leisure.

Then, he jumps to an idea that was perhaps hinted at before: The soul of leisure lies in celebration. I wish I had the time to track through all of his reasoning like I did in my last post, because I think that really helped me follow Pieper better. However, the reality is that I spent half of naptime baking apple bars with my older daughter, and I don’t regret anything other than that I don’t have the power to add an hour to my day.

Ahem.

As far as where celebration comes into all of this, as far as I can tell, it is in the idea that the essence of leisure, or what it means to be at leisure, is antithetical to utility. As a disclaimer, I must say that I haven’t decided whether I agree with Pieper here or not, but come to think of it, I probably do as long as utility is very narrowly defined and probably connected to having monetary value.

I loved that Pieper connected festival {or celebration, depending on your translator} to worship. He does this because he claims that, even though secular cultures will try to create silly days like Labor Day, a culture can’t have an authentic celebration without a religion to inspire it. My church has called our Sunday gathering “celebrations” at times, so I follow the connection naturally. With that said, I loved Pieper’s history lesson on temples. He explains that the root of the word temple, in both Latin as well as Greek, has the sense of meaning “cut off,” which refers to the fact that physically, a portion of land was cut off from all practical, economic use. This part of land was surrendered to the Lord.

One translator then says:

Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the Temple where space is concerned.

Here is a time when I actually prefer how it is rendered by Malsbary:

Worship is to time as the temple is to space.

But let’s appeal to Dru for the explanation:

[I]n divine worship, a definite space of time is set aside from working hours and days, a limited time, specially marked off–and like the space allotted to the temple, is not used, is withdrawn from all merely utilitarian ends. Every seventh day is a period of time of that kind: that is what a feast is, and such is its only origin and justification.

So leisure is utterly and completely frivolous, in the best sense of the word.

Was it John Hodges who pointed out that somewhere in the Alps there is probably a flower that bursts into beautiful bloom, and is never seen by human eyes? I think it was Hodges. His point was regarding how God has lavished beauty upon the world, and He does not do this pragmatically, as if it was only worth it if someone somewhere saw it and thanked Him for it. He delights in this sort of frivolity and excess, and it seems to me that this is the way in which we can follow Him into leisure without falling into self-indulgence.

I am not a natural play-er. It is hard for me to relax and “celebrate.” I see from all of this that I have something to learn from God Himself.

And also probably Chesterton.

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Read More:

-More book club entries over at Cindy’s.
-Online version of Leisure: the Basis of Culture