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In this episode, we’re talking about Mother Culture and why you should pursue it even if you are not a mom. Mother Culture is the pursuit of what is good, true, and beautiful in your life so that you can create a life that is delightful. Everyone who spends time taking care of other people can benefit from the pursuit of Mother Culture. Listen in to find out why and how.
S2E28 – My Reading Goals for this year + My Top 5 Books for 2024 – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast
Everyone should set a reading goal! Reading is so beneficial for you: both for your mind and for your character. How can we prioritize reading this year? By setting reading goals! Read on to learn about some benefits of reading and why you should set a reading goal. I also give some great recommendations for your next favorite read. Read more at the blog post: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/why-you-should-set-reading-goals/ Get our AMBL Book Bingo Challenge Here:https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/the-ambl-book-bingo-reading-challenge-expand-your-reading-life/ Want to keep track of your reading? Check out our reading trackers here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/50-book-reading-challenge-free-coloring-tracker/ Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. Want to support A More Beautiful Life Collective in the creation of podcasts, posts, and other resources? You can make aone-time, monthly, or yearly donation here. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop.Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.
Hey everyone! Welcome to S2E26! Today, we will be talking about something that will help fill your cup so that you can live a vibrant life that you love. We’ve been discussing our goals on the podcast as we prepare for the upcoming year. Often, goal setting is driven by an ambitious ‘go-go-go’ mentality. We want to achieve more so that we can look better, make more money, or maybe just ‘be a better you.’ Amid the hustle and bustle, we have to remember to fill our own cups to pour out into those around us.
Today, we are talking about Mother Culture. Don’t worry – this isn’t something that is just for moms. It’s really for anyone who spends much of their life meeting other people’s needs – educators, nurses, caretakers, parents. Truly everyone could benefit from developing Mother Culture in their life.
What is Mother Culture? We’ll talk about it more in this episode, but the simple answer is that mother culture is the intentional pursuit of things that are good, true, and beautiful done by the person for their enjoyment. Painting, reading poetry, visiting museums and parks, having a picnic in the sun – all these can be examples of mother culture. Listen in for why you should pursue mother culture in your life.
Want to get ideas for things to add to your life to create a life you love? Want to develop mother culture in your life? Download our list of 100 Hobbies to try this new year. You can also check out our Book Bingo challenge to enlarge your reading horizons. You can find that and more in our shop.
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When we don’t pursue Mother Culture
I have a lot of goals that I want to achieve this year. I want to have a clean house, continue homeschooling my kids, write this blog and podcast, work on other writing projects, play piano, learn to sew, spend 1000 hours outside, and start exercising… all while caring for a newborn.
Earlier this month, I was trying to do too much. My son had his schoolwork open on the table while my daughter was running laps around the chairs. Attempting to multi-task, I had my baby strapped to my chest while I dusted the knickknacks and crevices close by. My dog started barking, my son got distracted, and my daughter climbed up on the table singing at the top of her lungs.
Worn down from lack of sleep and on my third cup of coffee, I yelled, “Quiet!” and while slamming the book I was dusting onto the shelf.
Have you reached that fever pitch recently? You can have every intention of calmly addressing the stressors of everyday life. But, when your toddler throws the chili on the floor – which you know will give your dog diarrhea those intentions seem to fly out the window.
You feel harried, stressed, and worn out. That feeling comes out as words of anger and maybe anxiety.
It’s a nasty feedback loop. As you are ‘triggered’ by these everyday stresses, you respond in a way that induces stress to those around you. Then, your kids, spouse, and coworkers are stressed out because you are stressed out. And, the cycle continues.
The question is how do we break that cycle? How do we pull ourselves out of the stress we experience?
We all have a toolbox to soothe our kids.
When you first have kids, you go through lots of growing pains. In the newborn days, you learn how to settle a fussy baby. Check their diaper, feed them, swaddle them, rock them, and give them a pacifier. You begin to amass a toolbelt of soothing techniques.
It may seem like once you get past infancy you could hang up that toolbelt and just switch to ‘reasoning’ to navigate big feelings in your kids. But, we all know that it doesn’t work like that. I read something somewhere that when it seems like your kids are at their wit’s end, try one of two things: Take them outside or put them in water. Let me tell you – it works!
If your kids just seem like they are melting down, the best thing you can do is go back to the toolbelt: Are they tired? Are they hungry? Are they overstimulated? Do we need a change of pace?
Often, a diversion is the easiest and best way to reset their moods. You can’t discipline them out of a bad mood or meltdown. But, a breath of fresh air will do the trick.
Doing for ourselves what we would do for our children
We recognize this truth with our kids, but we often forget it for ourselves.
There is a picture going around online that says to treat yourself like a houseplant – Make sure you get plenty of water and sunshine every day. It’s funny that we even need to be reminded of that, but you know how quickly the demands of life get in between us and what we know we need to do.
When we start to feel like we are reaching our boiling point, we need to pause and assess our needs. Have we met them? Or are we neglecting them?
Just like we wouldn’t leave a newborn baby crying because of their hunger or wet diaper, we shouldn’t leave ourselves inwardly crying out for care.
How many of us loved to draw, sing, dance, or play sports as children only to find ourselves neglecting those life-giving activities after our kids arrive? We play chauffeur taking them from activity to activity while never pausing to dwell richly in the things that we love.
When I was younger, I loved to sit and play piano and guitar, singing to my heart’s content. I could play for hours after school on my little electric keyboard, flipping through pages of my favorite classic Disney songs. But, now I couldn’t tell you the last time I sat and played the piano just for the enjoyment of it.
Regarding mothers, Charlotte Mason wrote, “Then it is that she gets overdone. Then it is that she wears herself out. Then it is that, in her efforts to be ideal wife, mother, and mistress, she forgets that she is herself. Then it is, in fact, that she stops growing. There is no sadder sight in life than a mother, who has so used herself up in her children’s childhood, that she has nothing to give them in their youth.”
When we neglect ourselves, we may expose our children to opportunities for them to grow, but they will never be mentored by a life that is filled with delight. What would we rather teach our kids? To pursue something for the sake of a transcript or to keep up with the kids next door? Or to pursue something for the simple joy and love of that thing?
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Mother Culture: Creating a Life of Delight in Beautiful Things
This is what Mother Culture is. It is a recognition that our education will rub off on the habits, atmosphere, and very life of our homes. What we want our children to value, we must value. And, we show what we value in what we choose to devote our time to.
Karen Andrealoa, author of the book Mother Culture, explains how Mother Culture can lead to more radiant living:
“In the home where Charlotte Mason’s recommendations are followed, beautiful music fills the air, and curious, beautiful paintings are gazed upon. Nature is observed with a sense of wonder. Books, both interesting and inspiring, are savored as they are read aloud and narrated. Children understand the Bible by reading and narrating it, too.
A mother reaps advantages by applying Miss Mason’s education-through-the-humanities. These cultural things aren’t frivolity but a person’s “every bread of life.”
All the true, just, pure, lovely, praise-worthy, excellent things to think about and appreciate, rub off on her, her husband, and her children. As a result, a spark of enthusiasm, something hard to live without, produces radiant living.”
Mother Culture: Saving Western Civilization
Even more than this, when we participate in Mother Culture we can act as the last bastion of civilization and culture in a world that is quickly decaying in decadence.
Josef Pieper explains the necessity for leisure in the perpetuation of worthwhile knowledge, the knowledge that creates culture, in his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture. The word school, which denotes boring busy work for most of us, actually comes from the Latin scola and Greek skole. This word is derived from a word that means ‘leisure.’ Pieper explains why in his book.
As opposed to a ‘total-work’ culture like the one that we live in, leisure promotes the calm stillness required to gaze upon the good, true, and beautiful and be changed by it. He writes, “Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as activity … there is leisure as “non-activity” — an inner absence of preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet.
Leisure is a form of that stillness that is necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear. Such stillness is not mere soundlessness or a dead muteness; it means, rather, that the soul’s power, as real, of responding to the real — a co-respondence, eternally established in nature — has not yet descended into words. Leisure is the disposition of perceptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion — in the real.
Leisure is not the attitude of the one who intervenes but of the one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who lets go, who lets himself go, and “go under,” almost as someone who falls asleep must let himself go… The surge of new life that flows out to us when we give ourselves to the contemplation of a blossoming rose, a sleeping child, or of a divine mystery — is this not like the surge of life that comes from deep, dreamless sleep?” (Read more here.)
In a total-work culture, there are few and far between persons who can take part in this form of leisure. Even those who could often waste away their lives on the next distraction. Cindy Rollins, author of Mere Motherhood, mentioned that she felt like she was one of the blessed few who could participate in this kind of leisure as a homeschool mom. Because of the gift of time and the opportunity to read good books, she redeemed her education. Not only that, she was able to pass on the riches of Western civilization through her work on Ambleside Online, the Literary Life Podcast, and the New Mason Jar Podcast.
You don’t have to be a Homeschooling mom to participate in this kind of education. You just have to be willing to pursue this kind of leisure. And this can happen beautifully through pursuing Mother Culture.
Related: Forget Self Care: Try Soul Care
5 Ideas for Creating Mother Culture
The benefits of pursuing Mother Culture are easy to see. Through the pursuit of Mother Culture, you can be filled up. You can have a life filled with contagious delight that rubs off on your family, friends, and community. And, you have the opportunity to gaze upon the good, true, and beautiful and be changed by it.
How do you pursue Mother Culture?
Charlotte Mason explained, “Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents.” (Charlotte Mason Series Vol. 3 p. 33-34)
Mother Culture requires just a little bit of time and effort to pursue what we love and find delightful.
Here are 5 Ways that you can pursue Mother Culture in your life:
- Learn a few Hobbies.
Did you have a hobby that you loved when you were a child? Is there something that you used to do that you miss terribly but just can’t find the time for?
Spend some time pursuing that today! Painting, reading, writing, drawing, dancing, singing – there are so many great hobbies to choose from.
In our episode on why you should have 5 hobbies, I give some suggestions for things that you can pursue. Hobbies can add so much delight to your life!
- Start Digital Decluttering your life.
Unfortunately, we live in a world that has been utterly changed by technology. Technology does give us so many benefits – including me being able to write this article and share it with you! But, it provides a limitless distraction. If we want to make time for Mother Culture, we are probably going to need to cut out some of the mindless entertainment.
Digital Decluttering is the process of keeping the best of technology and getting rid of the rest. Through digitally decluttering our lives, we can put technology back in its proper place.
You can get our 30 days of digital decluttering guide here.
- Get Outside More and visit beautiful places.
I’m sure we’ve all lost ourselves gazing at a beautiful landscape at some point. I remember the school days when I would look longingly out the window, even if the view was just the parking lot outside. I still catch myself gazing out the window from time to time as I collect my thoughts or just catch a breath throughout the day.
The outdoors has a certain magnetic pull to it, and there’s good reason for that. There are so many benefits of getting outside. Taking a blanket and having a picnic outdoors is sure to boost your spirits and fill your soul.
Have more time to spare? Try visiting a beautiful place close to you. Going for a hike, visiting a state park, or driving to a lookout nearby can help to remind you of the grandeur of nature.
Reading is one of the best ways to think deeply about topics and expand our horizons. As we read, we are entering into another world of thought. Reading as a pastime is quickly disappearing. Choosing to pursue reading will help not only you but also the greater world as a whole as you enter into the great conversation.
To cultivate your reading life, start by picking a few books that interest you and read a few pages every day in those books. You’ll be surprised at how many books you’ll be able to get through if you just make it a daily habit.
Charlotte Mason recommended having at least three books going at a time: A Stiff (or challenging) book, An Easy Book, and A Novel.
I definitely read based on my feelings, and according to Goodreads, I’m in the middle of about 20 or so books. I try to follow Mason’s advice. I try to actively read the following: A theology book, a nonfiction book, an easy novel, a classic, and a homeschool/parenting book. I read a few pages in these books in the mornings (though not all of them every morning). I also generally have another easy read that I carry around through the day just in case I have a minute to read while nursing or the kids are playing.
You can expand your reading horizons by trying out our AMBL Book Bingo Reading Challenge. Remember, this is an opportunity for you to redeem your education. That’s a beautiful thing!
- Invest in the Atmosphere of Your Home
Lastly, invest in the atmosphere of your home to help your home to inspire you. Your home should feel like a haven to return to after dealing with the business of life. Part of making your home a haven is cleaning and decluttering. The other part is cultivating the atmosphere of your home.
What does your home look like? Smell like? Feel like?
You can add beautiful classic pictures on the wall to expose you and your family to great art. You can play beautiful music in the background to uplift your soul. Have a candle or diffuser going to add lovely smells. Get some fresh flowers or houseplants to bring a little bit of life inside.
Mrs. Mason said ‘Education is an atmosphere.’ When we are pursuing Mother Culture – our education – we should think about the way that the atmosphere of our home is educating us.
Find more ideas to pursue Mother Culture here: https://www.humilityanddoxology.com/mother-culture/
How will you pursue Mother Culture in your life?
Mother Culture isn’t just for moms. It is for anyone who takes care of someone else. Mother Culture is the cultivation of your soul. It’s choosing to add things that fill you up, things that delight you. When we choose to focus on the good, true, and beautiful, we cultivate what is good, true, and beautiful inside of us.
How are you going to pursue Mother Culture today?
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