Structuring Space and Time for Human Flourishing

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

In this workshop, we will explore ways of structuring space (primarily classroom architecture) and time (scheduling) to promote the flourishing of faculty and students. Every school has limitations regarding space and time, and no two schools are alike in their limitations, but employing a thoughtful design process can help schools make the most of what limited space and time they have. I will share the process whereby we have begun to restructure our classrooms and our daily schedule at The Stony Brook School in hopes of inspiring schools to do the same within the context of their own limitations.

Sean Riley

Sean A. Riley, PhD, serves as Academic Dean at The Stony Brook School, a Christian boarding and day school on Long Island. He earned his PhD in philosophy from Baylor University. At The Stony Brook School, Sean has taught courses in history, English, the Bible, and philosophy; coached football, tennis, and the Ethics Bowl team; and served as a dorm dad. He lives in Stony Brook with his wife, Emily, and his four children: Aidan, Liam, Honora, and Quinn.

The Liberal Arts and Human Flourishing

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

One encounters any number of reasons for the importance of a liberal arts education, both from within the Christian classical renewal and in the broader educational culture. In Christian classical circles one is likely to hear an emphasis upon the potency of the liberal arts as tools of learning, while in the broader culture the emphases one often meets range from vague notions of well-roundedness to pragmatic claims of employability. Thus the thesis advanced in the present article may appear to some as bold and somewhat surprising.

The best reason for pursuing a liberal arts education is not that it produces well-rounded persons, though the breadth of human experience it affords is expansive. Nor is it that the liberal arts foster or engender the kind of written, verbal, or critical thinking skills sought after by some employers, though the skills of persuasive writing and speaking and of interpretive reading and analysis indeed lie at the core of the liberal arts curriculum. Rather, the most compelling reason for pursuing a liberal arts education is the distinct claim that the historical, aesthetic, philological disciplines of the traditional liberal arts curriculum
cultivate the qualities of moral judgment, common sense (sensus communis), and taste.1 It is not only that the Western tradition has understood the distinctively human element of civilization to consist in the acquisition and exercise of these qualities, but also that they actually constitute the pre-critical conditions for human rationality itself. Put most simply, then, the best reason for pursuing a liberal arts education is that it cultivates the qualities necessary for human flourishing, both in terms of human reason and of human moral being in the world. It is also the most compelling because it is perfectly attuned to our own cultural moment.

Cultivating moral judgement, common sense, and taste

There is perhaps no single aspect in which a liberal arts education is more obviously unique than in its telos— the acquisition of moral wisdom or judgment. Earlier thinkers such as Plato or Aristotle would have called this virtue phronesis, practical wisdom. While our own culture is preoccupied with a plurality of incommensurable educational goals—rational mastery of a subject, technical proficiency, the ability to calculate, to deduce, or to process data—the ideal of a liberal education has always been wise and responsible action in the world. Phronesis thus unites the theoretical and the practical goals of education; we might say that it is the good sense to know what to do with truth. Honed through imitation and continual practice, it is the skill of living a good human life in the world.2

The question arises, however, if the liberal arts are primarily academic in nature, how does such an education cultivate this virtue of practical rationality? The most direct answer is that they do not and cannot do so on their own. Acquiring the skill of living wisely in the world takes practice— real choices, real actions, real consequences.3 However, the liberal arts provide irreplaceable imaginative resources for acquiring this skill. In fact, imagination is perhaps principal among these resources, for the poets and historians have bequeathed to us the great gift of literature—narratives historical and fictional—where one may observe the lives of the wise and the foolish, experiencing those lives vicariously by entering imaginatively into their stories. Through the study of literature the student gains the kind of experience in life necessary for moral formation that his or her young age does not permit. Hence, what one lacks in lived experience he can glean from literary experience. Cicero adds a further dimension to our understanding of this imaginative effect of literary experience in his famous oration Pro Archia Poeta. “All books are full, all words of the wise are full, and all history is full of examples,” he writes; “I have always kept these images in view when serving as a magistrate, shaping my heart and mind after them by meditating on their excellences.” For Cicero the study of history and literature afforded by a liberal arts education not only instructed him but compelled him boldly to act for the common good of his community. The experience gained from the liberal arts provides narratives for making sense of one’s own life and directs one’s affections toward what is good and noble and true. Potent resources indeed for acquiring moral wisdom.

Sensus communis is closely connected to the skill of moral judgement. Although we often render this Latin phrase with the familiar words common sense, it is necessary to recall something of the technical meaning these words carry over from the art of rhetoric in order fully to appreciate their importance.4 Of course, we use the phrase common sense all of the time to mean an intuitive understanding of how to get along in the world, often contrasting it with academic or specialized knowledge.
(In fact, one is at times tempted to conclude that common sense is precisely the one quality many academics are lacking.) Although the ordinary meaning of the phrase is not identical to its technical sense, it happily flows from it. In classical rhetoric, sensus communis actually refers to that shared understanding of the world that a rhetorician can rely on when crafting his oration. It is not something he must prove, nor even that he will often state. Rather, it is that shared body of assumptions that invisibly bind together a group of people and, as writers from C. S. Lewis to Alasdair MacIntyre demonstrate,5 actually make moral reasoning possible in the first place. Since this quality was first marginalized and then suppressed during the Enlightenment, it is difficult for the contemporary reader to appreciate just how important the acquisition of common sense was to educators in the classical world.6 Aristotle notes in the Ethics, for example that the conscious transfer of the culture’s body of shared assumptions is one of education’s primary objectives.7

As a quality intentionally cultivated by the liberal arts curriculum, sensus communis is best characterized as a studied sense of the wisdom and insight (and indeed the prejudices and presuppositions) of previous generations. As such, it awakens us to that indefinably familiar atmosphere that breathes through the pages of the stories, shapes the historical narratives, and inflects the language of a people at a given place and time. It develops a conscious sense for what is commonly, though implicitly, held to be true. Common sense is thus closely related to what Edmund Burke famously coins the moral imagination in his Letter Concerning the Recent Revolution in France, and sounds remarkably like that distinctly human faculty-the chest-whose loss C. S. Lewis laments in the first part of The Abolition of Man. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur also seems to be invoking this sense of the common, when he speaks of the insight into life acquired via the “long detour” among the literary and imaginative works of humanity.8 He argues that what seems to be a detour is actually the obligatory path we must take if we are to understand ourselves and our culture. Failure to take this detour, to run along this path, is to guarantee the short-circuiting of self-knowledge. Interestingly, Ricoeur’s detour among the historical, aesthetic and philological disciplines is actually the well-worn path of the liberal arts curriculum—the study of history, literature, poetry, and language. The liberal arts connect us to our historical tradition by cultivating a sense for what is held in common throughout the history of that tradition.

The development of taste is something of an aesthetic analog to the cultivation of common sense. While it is not only artists who need to cultivate taste, reflection upon their experience is helpful in understanding its foundational importance. For to become a musician, fine artist, actor, or poet, is to take the long detour via the aesthetic achievements of humanity. The cellist works through the instrument’s received repertoire, the fine artist makes master copy after master copy, the actor rehearses the same lines countless other actors have performed for generations. I suppose we grasp intuitively the role tradition plays in the pedagogy of the arts. Lest we fail to recognize its significance, however, it is important to see that the specific claim of the arts in this regard is that creativity and artistic sensibilities are formed by attention to tradition. Picasso, to cite a somewhat dated but brilliant example, is highly original (to many of his time shockingly so); yet, without the tradition of European masters, there would be no blue paintings, no Guernica. Again, we grasp all of this intuitively; but how often do we fail to reflect upon the actual process of artistic formation when we wonder over much that is crass, tasteless, or vulgar in contemporary culture? The development of aesthetic taste, like the development of the adult palate, is formed by experience. As common sense is a studied sense for
the commonly held truths of a culture, taste is a sense for what is fitting or decent that is cultivated over time and experienced in the arts.

The liberal arts are more timely than timeless.

I asserted above that the most compelling reason to pursue a liberal arts education is that it cultivates the qualities necessary for human flourishing. To understand why this makes the liberal arts relevant to contemporary culture it is necessary to place our cultural moment within historical perspective. The last century witnessed a series of radical upheavals in the cultural and intellectual life of Western civilization. While one is tempted to think here only of cultural developments—the world wars, the advent of the nuclear age, or the sexual revolution—the intellectual landscape changed forever as well. Most importantly in this regard is the abandonment of what some intellectual historians have termed the Enlightenment project.9

To paint with very broad strokes, the Enlightenment is an episode in the intellectual life and culture of Western civilization, where on the basis of and in reaction to a number of factors—scientific, social, religious, and political—Western thinkers experienced an acute loss of confidence in central elements of human tradition and in the institutions which embodied and perpetuated that tradition. Where Western civilization had been maintained by a tensed harmony (at least in theory) of a number of incommensurable authorities—faith, tradition, reason, experience, community—the Enlightenment project is perhaps best characterized as the attempt to secure the goods of that tradition upon the putatively certain ground of reason. A brilliant illustration of this project
is Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? in which he famously describes enlightenment as man’s emergence from self-imposed immaturity, an immaturity strictly defined as reliance upon such traditional mediating structures and institutions as books, doctors, priests, and judges in human intellectual, physical, religious, and moral life. To be enlightened, claims Kant, is to dare to think for oneself—sapere aude!— and thus his ideal human is a rationally autonomous subject for whom reason is the sole guarantor of human intellectual and moral goods. The notion that human flourishing is dependent upon anything more fundamental than reason is precisely what is repudiated here.

By the mid-twentieth century, when the realization that the European Enlightenment had culminated in the most devastating (and efficient) elimination of human  life the world has yet witnessed—indeed, greater in quantity than all armed conflicts in human history combined—recognition of the Enlightenment project’s failure was widespread. Yet, it was not merely malaise or disillusionment that signaled the end of the Enlightenment. Throughout the twentieth century there was also a succession of insights—notably from the sciences— concerning the role historical tradition and community practices play in forming our philosophical outlook, the influence that religious (or anti-religious) presuppositions have in our reasoning, and the comprehensive effect that language and culture have in shaping our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. With this succession of insights has come renewed appreciation for the displaced notions of faith, tradition, reason, experience, and community. There has been renewed appreciation as well for the practices and ways of being in the world that gave these notions plausibility prior to the Enlightenment.

It is this new way of thinking about human rationality that provides a renewed context for liberal arts education, and the most compelling case for its contemporary re-appropriation. An Enlightenment view of reason has simply proved too narrow to account for human rationality, much less to secure the goods of human life. The historical, aesthetic, and philological disciplines of the liberal arts curriculum, however, are especially well fitted to the more robust understanding of what it means to be rational in our current intellectual situation.

Beyond the “well-rounded” student

Understanding this historical context also helps us to perceive the problem with the commonplace notion mentioned above that a liberal arts education produces well-rounded people. For it was precisely as an unquestioning response to Enlightenment rationality that the liberal arts were first defended as the means of making well-rounded persons. The rational and scientific disciplines, so the thinking went at the time, set the standards for what it meant to be well educated. The liberal arts are important for making one refined, cultured, humane. Thus, taste, common sense, and judgment were understood to be important subjective or intuitive qualities one should develop while acquiring an otherwise objective and scientific education. However laudable the intention, this notion is tragically mistaken for at least two important reasons. In the first place, rather than maintaining the liberal arts in something of a separate-but-equal status with the sciences, emphasizing their cultural or refining qualities actually served to relegate the liberal arts to educational window-dressing. In the age of science, urbanization, and industrialization, such accoutrement was superfluous—indeed, when it comes to making the automobile, not only history, but art and literature too, are bunk. In this brave new world of progress, the very notion of refinement was seen to smack of elitism and old-world aristocracy. Moreover, in light of the discussion above, it ought to be clear that the relegation of the liberal arts to
the periphery of the curriculum was philosophically naive. It was not apparent in the nineteenth century, but we see now that the qualities the liberal arts cultivate, much more than rounding out a practical, scientific education, actually play a fundamental role in the acquisition of human understanding as such. The liberal arts are thus essential to and not just an accidental element of education.

In The Abolition of Man C. S. Lewis writes: “And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation— we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self- sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity
we remove the organ and demand the function.” He is lamenting the failure of modern education to cultivate
the very qualities we have addressed all too briefly in this essay—moral judgement, common sense, and taste—not, we should note, critical thinking or academic rigor. Modern education rendered the cultivation of these humanizing qualities impossible because it displaced the liberal arts curriculum with what was imagined to be a more practical or more relevant curriculum. Chesterton once remarked that thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world. Perhaps we could adapt his words here and apply them to our discussion: thoroughly practical people never understand what is truly practical. So in its departure from modern education, the Christian classical renewal has come to understand that it is precisely the liberal arts curriculum—that seemingly impractical detour among the literary and imaginative works of humanity— that cultivates the qualities necessary for meaningful human action, and indeed true human flourishing.

The Sine Qua Non is Christ

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

Christian classical education is, we believe, the most excellent form of education. But why? What makes our theory and practice good, true, and beautiful? At its heart, Christian classical education both mimics and evokes God’s intended purpose for human flourishing. We are guided in our quest by two books: the laws of general and special revelation. Thus, our pedagogical uniqueness in fact emerges as a summary of all that is good, true, and beautiful in other educational systems, unified in submission to the glory of God in Christ.

The Sine Qua Non in Theory

The purpose of education generally is to teach students to pursue and achieve excellence in their chosen field of study. Excellence, or virtue, according to Aristotle, is doing things in the right way, at the right time, and for the right reasons, all of which are determined by the way the world is designed to function.1 Thus, excellence has intellectual, technical and ethical dimensions, and these must be learned and practiced for students to flourish as human beings.2 Many educational systems recognize this holism.

Christian education, as practiced in a Christian school or university, adds to this general aim for excellence a specific submission of all excellence to the glory of God (Col. 3:23).3 Christian education for excellence trains students and faculty to submit every thought, word and deed to Christ in addition to the laws of nature by which He established the creation. This requires a depth of life-and-learning integration “piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). As Calvin puts it near the beginning of his Institutes, “Nearly all of the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”4 Such personal formation extends human flourishing to our communities and society at large (Matt. 5:13-16).5

Many have pursued excellence in the field of teaching, or pedagogy, and collectively discovered several “natural laws” of learning that together form a coherent theoretical narrative with a beginning, middle and end: learning begins with engagement, develops in stages, and culminates in excellence. As general truths of the created world, they apply equally to all educators.

Students become engaged in a subject when their curiosity is sparked—for students are more like fires to be lit than buckets to be filled.6 The spark comes from the sudden strike of a student’s own concerns against the hardness of the world, be it an intellectual, technical, ethical or any other kind of difficulty.7 The spark of curiosity must be sheltered from the harsh winds of fear and anxiety—fear of being wrong, anxiety over unknown consequences—so that students can take the risks that learning will require of them to satisfy their curiosity. A spirit, or pneumos (breath), of levity or playfulness fans the flame at any stage but especially at the beginning.8 As the psalmist wrote, “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Ps. 111:2).

Just as one builds a fire from a spark by adding sequentially larger pieces of wood, learning also develops in hierarchical stages. Many educational theorists have noticed this truth and posited their own version of these stages. For instance, John Dewey observed the Five Steps of Good Thinking;9 Gregory articulated the Seven Laws of Teaching;10 Sayers popularized the Trivium as Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric;11 Bloom and colleagues built the Taxonomy of Cognitive Learning;12 Vygotsky argued for a Zone of Proximal Development between the stages of Dependence and Independence;13 and Wenger narrated the social learning journey from Novice to Expert.14 All of these paradigms have their various uses in the life cycle of the classroom, from curriculum development through implementation and assessment, depending on whether the theory is phrased in terms of the teacher, learner, classroom, intellect, emotions, actions, or social relationships. Nevertheless, they share an emphasis on sequential development of increasingly complex, independent problem-solving skills.

To simplify this discussion, I focus on the central cognitive outcome of each stage for the individual student, which together are summarized best by the Trivium model as Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, often used in Christian, classical education.15 Grammar consists of the basic vocabulary of a subject, such as “atoms,” “reactions,” and “compounds” in chemistry. Logic details the rules or theories governing a valid argument in a subject, that is, its peculiar form of reasoning (which must also accord with the general laws of logic). Chemical logic, for instance, includes atomic orbital theory and stoichiometry. Rhetoric is the original, self-authentic expression of new questions and persuasive arguments in the field. There is an aspect of individuality, beauty and elegance that is produced in the rhetorical stage, the mark of what many would call “mastery” of the subject as it echoes the ancient tradition of master craftsmen. Any expert-like activity, no matter how simple, requires rhetorical skill, whether it is calibrating glassware, designing experiments, or developing paradigm-shifting theories.

*1st: Increasing breadth create
engaging spark, then Fundamentals (Novice) Compound Concepts (Journeyman) Entire Field (Master)

• Observation
• Labeling
• Memorization

• Deduction
• Inference
• Good guessing

• Survey • Review

• Categorization • Diagramming

• Research essays • Debates

• Copy-change • Study design

• Inventory
• Calibration • Designing

alternative taxonomics

• Hypothesis generation

• Error analysis
• Report Writing • Presentations

• Novel questions • Inventing new

methods • Theory

development

Therefore, these stages apply to every scope within a field of study. That is, there are stages (depth) to mastering the nested scopes (breadth) of a subject, from its fundamentals to compound concepts to the entire field. To achieve a state of competency and especially mastery at any scope, the student must eventually use a particular knowledge or skill in expert-like situations. An example might be the challenge of using a pipette correctly: this is a fundamental chemistry skill, but it will not be mastered by listening to instructions or watching others do it—it must be practiced by the student in the lab.16 Moreover, as Wenger notes, much knowledge is tacit, only communicated by mimicking others in the same community of practice until the novice imitates the master so closely he becomes the next master.17 In developing the stages of learning, then, the task of the teacher is to recreate a series of increasingly complex and independent expert-like events that lead students from fundamentals to comprehension of the entire field under study.18 These pedagogical principles dictate certain types of teaching practices for each stage of mastery and each scope of study (Table 1).

The Sine Qua Non in Practice

After the students have been engaged with some felt difficulty, the next step is to master fundamentals of the field. These educational practices begin with observations, labeling, and memorization to build vocabulary. Once this mental structure is present, we find the weak spots through categorizing and diagramming new exemplars. To master the fundamentals, students need an expert-like fundamental activity, for example a simple, real-life taxonomy project like taking inventory of one’s lab equipment.

At the next level, students expand their knowledge of the field by combining fundamentals into compound concepts. Teaching/learning practices here include making predictions, debating positions, and creating written and visual arguments. Every field offers plenty of real-life situations where these skills are practiced, and most can be brought into the classroom, e.g., hypothesis generation, error analysis, report writing, and oral presentations.

At the final, most expansive scope of excellence, teaching/ learning practices aim for broad comprehension of the field. The grammar stage involves exposure to surveys that review the field. The transition from analyzing to synthesizing this vast amount of information can be difficult; the first step should be to copy and yet slightly change a master’s work. With this basic example of their own creativity in mind, students can design their own approach to the teacher’s chosen object of study or research question. To master creativity at a broad scope, a real-life, expert activity could be to choose a topic at will and then invent new methods or theories for investigating it.

The end of learning is excellence: wisely applying this comprehensive knowledge to real-life situations. Thus, it is paramount that students learn to practice true moral and philosophical principles of human flourishing.19 In Christian higher education, this is the purpose for integrating our Christian faith and our learning, which requires its own educational practices.

Integration of faith and learning is a competency like any other insofar as it develops in stages of increasing scope. Mastery in this area is marked by the explicit and appropriate consideration of the things of God in every field-specific endeavor. Such consideration always has an ethical or moral dimension, as we are to do all things— including lab experiments—with the integrity commanded by God. But if doctrine and theory make claims about the same things, Christian doctrines may also require a Christian student to modify her understanding of a particular theory in her field. This is the case in the study of origins and much of social science and the humanities, since those fields make claims about biblical subjects such as God, man, and morality. Thus, one of the fundamental skills of integration is recognizing when it is appropriate and when it is not. The subsequent ability to modify and mutually adjust theories requires increasing creativity as the scope in focus increases. Eventually, the real-life learning situations become real life itself, the whole of one’s life as lived in community before the Lord. Yet though we aim for this total submission, we will not realize it until Glory.

In summary, the task of Christian, classical education has many dimensions. Here, I have laid out two (cognitive depth and breadth) that apply to the individual. As I strive to implement these educational practices for the individual, I unavoidably run into the other dimensions of learning.

I see how social interactions—including my own role modeling—enable or disable independence. I learn which teaching practices create a safe and playful classroom. I discern the difference between experiential learning and experiential entertainment. I recognize when and how a learning challenge is a spiritual issue. Indeed, teaching is part of my own journey to integrate my own faith and learning. My faith requires that I learn to submit my thoughts, words, and deeds as a teacher to the glory of God and the good of others. Because I am a fallible teacher, I am fundamentally a student in my own classroom, learning to pursue Christian excellence alongside my pupils. In fact, this is the telltale. The sine qua non of Christian, classical education is not a disembodied concept of “virtue.” Rather, it is Christ Himself. His glory and lordship extends not only to our educational theory and practice, but also to our very selves—for in Christ, “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).

Learning to Love What Must Be Done

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

I am sure that most of you, like me, have fought hard to overcome a perpetual desire to relax and procrastinate when important tasks loomed. Those of you who have never battled with procrastination – well, your problems are obviously of another sort.

In college, I recall several who transformed the practice of putting things off into art. Do you remember the guy in your dorm hall who wouldn’t begin his term paper till the night before it was due–and somehow still got an A? These types make it tempting for all of us.

The etymology of procrastination is worth examining: the word comes from the Latin pro (for- ward, on behalf of) and cras (tomorrow). Therefore, at its root, the word means pro-tomorrow. Remember the maxim of the slacker: Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? In contrast, we find encouragement of a different sort from the German poet Goethe: Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.

 I can sure do with a little more Goethe; and I am forced to reason that my children must need his advice, too. Many voices call for our attention- -and not all of them bad. Sure, there are the typical scoundrels calling for us: hours of mindless TV programs, online surfing and chit-chat and other forms of “entertainment” that do little to exalt our minds or souls (no wonder Christopher Wren called TV “chewing gum” for the eyes). There are some good TV programs available too–some unusually good programs on the History Channel (but also some weird ones). We must admit, too, that amidst the ocean of drivel on the internet there are some exceptionally good sites and resources. Rejecting good things for what is best can be sorely difficult– should the family stay home tonight or take off for a church service or activity? Finding a routine helps – for the routine answers the questions before they come up. Yes, we are going for a walk this afternoon – we always do. Yes, we will start homework after dinner – that is our routine. Crafting the routine, of course, is not necessarily easy. I know many families have great, thoughtful, tested, and re-tooled routines (could you send me a copy?). Some families with younger children (or maybe only one young child) are probably still working on crafting a family rhythm and pattern. Establishing a routine that works well is an ongoing enterprise that keeps answering the question of what must go, stay, or be added. Once we have created a workable routine, another challenge becomes clear. How do we maintain momentum, energy, stability, and peace? At least part of the answer comes from Goethe: We should love those things we must do. Once our daily tasks become beloved tasks, the routine becomes less routine. This, I believe, is something we can pass on to our children, like an attitude, for Goethe is encouraging a mindset not an activity. If they see some measure of joy as we cook, clean, mow, and repair, they are apt to find it easier to love (in a manner of speaking) clearing their plates, bathing, and doing homework. Strange as it is, they usually grow up to be like us.
 

Education, after all, is largely a matter of routine. Nothing is mastered without regular visitation, review, and study. And education never stops. If we can, we should cast the work our students do as a labor of love, a life-long love, and we should love what they do, too. Education will have its high moments, its epiphanies, breakthroughs, and moments of joy–much like a marriage. But the larger tranquility of a good education comes from the regular labor of worksheets, translations, and reading assignments, in the same way a good marriage grows on preparing a meal, raking the lawn, and taking a walk.

Once we have created a routine and learned to love it, we can also find yet even further comfort in knowing that a regular part of our routine must be to break from it. We call these breaks of routine by various names, such as “dinner out,” “weekends,” and “vacations.” These can be holy days in their own right, those special routines that are special largely because they are not daily, and because they are a ritual of celebration. And we celebrate with the most poignant joy when our work is done (the hay is in the barn, the homework is all done– let’s go to dinner). Put another way, when we work well, we rest well.