The Mom Weekly Volume 113: October 7, 2025
You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.
Notes:
There are a few birthdays and half-birthdays in the days around when this Weekly goes out, so Happy Birthday to all of those family members & friends who are celebrating! And a new baby! There’s now a triumverate of birthdays from October 5 to October 7. Everyone knows how much I love celebrating birthdays, and know I’ll be celebrating right along with you.
Remember how much I love you,
Mom
A House with Four Rooms
At a used bookstore or a book sale some years ago, I picked up the Rumer Godden memoir, A House with Four Rooms.
I find her novels for children such good reads, though they are melancholy! — from The Story of Holly and Ivy to The Kitchen Madonna. I loved her novel In This House of Brede (but the BBC adaptation of it is terrible! Not worth a watch).
Anyway, this is apparently the second memoir she wrote, and it relates to the second half of her life. It covers her second marriage, her writing and screenwriting career, and her conversion to Catholicism.
Here’s how she found the title:
There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emtional, and a spiritual . Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.
What a great framework to think about living a whole and holistic life!
A few notes about the rest of the quotes: her son’s name is Jan; her sister’s name is Jon. I found this confusing often—they are too similar! But it’s real life, not fiction, where you can name the people in ways that aren’t confusing, haha. I hope you enjoy these quotes as much as I did!
I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate—or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my “ten minutes’. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.”
A pamphlet written by the nuns of Stanbrook Abbey explaining why they are cloistered:
We do not engage in works outside our monastery
For we have chose to live in silence and concentration
At the hidden springs, the deepest level
Where the struggle is enacted between the powers of good and evil
Where your union with Christ bears fruit for all mankind …
We have chosen a stillness more powerful than all activity.
A detachment more fulfilling than all possession,
A wisdom exceeding all knowledge
And a love beyond all.
“Time is a stream in which there is no abiding.”
(Taken from The Meditations of Emporer Marcus Aurelius Antonius)
Writing about her son Jan when he was a young boy:
One night I found him writing poems in bed by moonlight and, ‘I can’t show them to you until they stop being secret,’ he said. How well I understood.
The following two quotes are in one chapter about her Catholicism, which is colored through by the many years she lived in India.
Sometime before Jon had sent me, for the Bhavakad-Gita: “The god Krishna says: However men approach me, even so do I welcome them, for the path men take from every side leads to me.”
……
“When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come.” That is a Hindu proverb which for me over and over again has proved true.
(After this she shares about several influential priests in her life, as well as her long association with the sisters of Stanbrook Abbey, which led to the writing of “In This House of Brede.”
Interestingly, while I was wondering where Stanbrook Abbey is in England, it’s actually now a hotel. So we could stay there!
The sisters some time back sold the property, and live in a different abbey, in Yorkshire, a different part of England. They still offer a lot of spiritual guidance and spend their lives in prayer.
Interesting/Notable:
Captain Ron’s Guide to Fearless Flying—The Atlantic, Gift Article
I loved this article so much! Flying really isn’t that great, even when we can fly in business class due to points. But learning some tips from people who help those who are afraid to fly is a helpful way to feel “slightly” better about it.
Both my parents died. This letter explains how I kept going. –Washington Post gift link
Get out the Kleenex if you read this one. It’s really beautiful.