A Hobbit's Guide to Screen Time

To my son Leon, and to my daughter Amelia Teresa,

My children, never forget we Hobbits have now gone to the ends of the continents settling in the verdant earth of wherever God and Men may tend gardens. In fact, I was just reflecting with your mother about the time we walked the Morelia hills our ancestors still till. And even today at our little home among the Coeur D Alene, we live not so much unlike our fathers and mothers did in their age.

May these rhythms and songs keep you and your children strong for the days to come.

Remember my children, the English speakers in the Americas are obsessed with seconds. Down to the minute they punch in and still wonder why they feel besieged by busyness. Our Latin tongues have long given us the healthy precision with which we live our days. Hora, now, the smallest reducible respectable moment for any human is and will always be the hour. Those who live on the dot of the clock do a great harm with alarms to themselves.

The primacy of the morning begins with Luften as your mother’s people have called it. While those Tutonic Hobbit tribes are rarely terse, always colliding many words, they correctly chose a single word for such an important tradition. In warmer months, throw open every window and door that the cool mists from the morning may meander through your habitation. Stuffy homes make for stuffy folks. Push open the portals of your dwelling before the sun breaks and you will have already claimed a great victory for your day. In the winter months keep the Luften as you feed the stove every few hours or so. Even on the most frigid days let the stale air escape less your soul forget to be gracious for the heat of the trees continually storing and expelling the Sun’s energy.

As the old from the evening passed empties from your space, begin your Lauds for the day. Remember the martyrs from my name sake, to the Cristeros, and those who were cut down in the Red Terrors, and on to the martyrs who will fall today. Passion and Praise. There is no other way to begin a day.

Now on to your stretches! Should you ever taste a hint of loathing discipline, recall the song that still a century on echos in the hundred acre wood,

When I up, down, touch the ground

It puts me in the mood

Up, down, touch the ground

In the mood, for food…

In every age, you will find a flavor of that Albigensian heresy condemning the body. Yet even the bears with their Hundred Acre lairs know we were made for the resurrection.

It is important before you eat, remember to sing. Laud the creator of the day for he has made. Even on the morning after your grandmother’s passing, your grandfather called me through tears with Lauds of joy as the clear skies let the sun bathe Saint Junípero Serra’s oratories. It is even written of Saints Peter and John that the first thing they did after the descent of the Holy Spirit was keep the hours of prayer. And so for twenty centuries we have yet to cease the hymns that invite us in to the daily miracle of living.

Now, yes of course we must cover meals. What the Hobbits of Sarehole called First Breakfast, we have long called Pancito y Cafecito. A little bread and a little coffee. Your mother often reminds me joyfully of that little verse where Elijah could go no further when the Angel of the Lord prepared for him a little drink and a bit cake, thus restoring him to escape his enemies. Now, never let those of our brethren from Sarehole to the Saracens forget, it was our people whom God entrusted coffee and chocolate. Whenever you host, treat your guests to the fullness of these gifts! And never arrive as a guest at First Breakfast empty handed!

Then comes the time for gardening, with a bit of breakfast already in our stomach, walk the stalks and garden beds in the cool of the morning. Pay a visit to our neighbors and their gardens giving thanks for their bounties. When you were very young, the elderly couple down the road kept a hedge of raspberries so abundant you ate to your hearts content for the entire season. Do not neglect to meander the forest near our home while foraging huckleberries. In the winter months, bake with the preserved fruits. Share them with our neighbors and friends. they will freely exchange with you their confections. Your mother, famous for her crumble made with apples from the valley, imbued it with her Westphalia spirit and won for us many alliances among our little dwelling.

When the time for Second Breakfast arrives following Terce, especially with those Hobbits from Sarehole, teach them how to make a Mollete! Even better if you can take them to the little cafe around the corner from Frida’s home just north of Xochimilco. I know not who first taught our Albion brethren how to put beans on toast, but always take the opportunity to host with the hope that they will one day learn how it is done!

By this time in the day, may you find yourself in conversation with others incarnate or at the very worst, which is still wonderful, in the written word. God did not think the universe into existence but spoke it and it was so and it was good and so when you speak with another soul you expand another’s world and you yourself will bring into being new constellations of thinking. Even Saint Francis, when so poor by his own choosing had no books or monks for conversation, would speak with the animals and trees quite liberally as they too share in creation and have much to say in praise of our Creator. Always be attentive to the pines piqued for the celestial things while keeping their roots watered deep. They are both more down to earth and nearer to heaven and therefore every healthy forest is a symphony of sermons.

Children you already know why we anchor our days on la Comida at the height of the Sun’s rays. Gather with family and friends and let nothing keep you from enjoying them. You know your great Aunt Mary Helen who worshiped in both Mexico and Spain in the preconsiliar age still lives among us today and always keeps a Serrano in her purse that there should never be a mediocre meal or worse! Sin Prisa, Sin Prisa, no rush, no rush. Let the hour grow long. Always make your table a place of Sobremesa. The drunk are those who do not know the delightful sobriety of lingering.

Do not count any man a Christian who claims he should not eat meat or that somehow Christianity is non-violent thing. Remember our Lord’s teaching at the return of the prodigal son, that the fattened calf be made into a feast to accompany great rejoicing. Remember the words of the Lord our God that only the violent will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. At your table are weary women and men who have been their entire lives at war in the spiritual realm. I still remember the greeting your mother and I received upon our arrival in Morelos. All the tribes of our family embracing us through tears shouting, “We are in your battle! We are in your fight!” And were not their prayers heard over that table feast? That your grandmother would live to see the next generation, her children’s children, just as the Psalm says?

Extend your invitation always beyond the meal to the Siesta, that your guests would not merely be refreshed but restored. The Barajas, Castillos, Gutierrez, Roldan, and Velazquez have always been Magi when it comes to this! Couches conjured into existence time and time again with the exact number of cushions for all their guests. What would the world look like if we continued to extend our practices to the weary souls of the world? Even Jesus in the face of demons and death, rested. What could we have on our calendars and clocks that is more pressing than the salvation of the world when even our Lord Siestas in the Storm? Always, always, always keep the Siesta, the littlest sabbath strung about all your days that no matter your vocation, you may daily taste the sacred!

And so we cannot complete our holy trinity without el Paseo. Those north of your mother’s Hobbit tribes settled on the Rhine call this practice by its common libation, FIKA. This is the same hour the Sarehole Hobbits take their tea. Over every continent at this hour our people awaken delighted and lively. Shops open again as the Sun begins its retreat from hanging overhead. Do not neglect el Paseo my children. It is always on these little walks we meet strangers turned neighbors and get another chance at the greatest command. We begin by loving our neighbors as ourselves and then arrive at loving God with our whole hearts. Oh that we would discover new ways to experience glory by walking. Never forget this simplicity!

As the day wanes, this is the hour when your mother enjoys board games. As you already know, I often take to any surface serviceable for responding to letters and notes in such a way I can always lift my head and see who is winning. Prepare many tapas and invite over friends. Remember even Saint Dominic mixed his wine and dined with the Albigensians! Should anyone be infirm and unable to partake in the day, this is the hour to visit with them. Delight in conversation of lineage and legends and keep no eye on the minute hand! It was during this hour your great grandfather, Francisco would do his rounds in Tijuana, sipping beers and playing pool with friends all while smoking a cigarette. “Never the ones made in the States!” He would say. That was one of his secrets to living to see almost an entire century.

My mother, like her mother, as I’m certain all their mothers have for centuries, use this time to brew one of our most sacred drinks: el jugo de Corazon para la flor de Jamaica. We still keep vessels of this drink in preparation for many guests always. And it is in this cool of the evening that your great grandmother Maria Teresa still makes lemonade from the citrus on her trees. Our fathers since the arrival of the first Christians have long kept the vespers in these hours. When the candles burn down to the last drips of their wicks they clean them then drink pulque or mezcal from la veladora to their lips.

In my earlier writings, I have mentioned the importance of the vigil devotion but here I will do my best to treat it as our ancestors have. Light candles of prayer both at home and in our parishes. It is right we treat those pillars of fire and wax as though they were the beacons of Gondor themselves. “Prayer! Prayer! Prayer! This is the best artillery!” taught San Josemaría Escrivá. Indeed when we pray, lift up the intentions of the souls that lit each of those flames. You will one day in Heaven, witness all those prayers answered. Let your life fill stadiums of souls that you have prayed for.

Pray like Hannah when at Shiloh her lips moved yet only heaven had the ears to hear in the silence of that painful moment. Pray like Miriam did when her people were finally free across the sea. Pray the way Jesus made the Our Father with no I’s and me’s, but our’s and we’s. Remember what Saint Peter wrote, we are all sojourners on this earth, reminding each of us that every prayer we pray can be lifted up for another every single day.

We are far from alone. Even James and John and Peter went with Jesus to pray, only to witness Moses and Elijah alive with him. You have never met a mere mortal said the man of the Wardrobe, and the Witch, and the Lion. We are among souls signed with the signature of the divine. Our traditions are not old and The Kingdom of Heaven is just getting started.

My children there has always been a ring that will allow one to sacrifice the present things for the comforting facade of hiding, just like Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree. It began as ore forged in the fires of Mordor and then one day returned with a bell and a receiver in shops and hotels before the ring became a screen that still offers the same thing. Did not the wisdom of the prophets and kings centuries before Christianity teach, there is nothing new under the Sun?

And so all the Hobbit’s about the earth continue gardening and gathering, grieving and growing. Another ring has come upon the land and as our Holy Father has said echoing J. R. R. Tolkien,

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.

“Do you really love me”, inquires the King? “Of course”, every fisher of men has said since the Rock who hauled in the nets. Then there is only one more thing when it comes to living in a world with rings and screens:

Feed. My. Sheep.

-Steven

PS. Thank you to everyone who has purchased one of my books and helped support my work. My new book, The Enduring Devotion: Contemplations on the Christian Mysteries, is available now. My first book, Restored in the Rhythm is available here.