Well, for me at least.
I realized awhile ago that I use the school year to determine my "year". I suppose this makes sense, because the school year has dictated what I can and cannot do for the majority of my life. First, while I was being homeschooled. Then while I was at college. Then my husband was in grad school. And now, in just a few weeks, my husband will be teaching classes while finishing up his PhD.
I actually like this way of measuring the year. This cyclical view can be reassuring. The end of August and beginning of September is a natural starting point for new beginnings. May has both the great anticipation of a summer vacation and the satisfaction of completion. Summer is a time for catching up, preparing for the next year, and maybe even having a more relaxed schedule. (Of course the summer is still busy, but it is a different kind of busy.)
I embrace this difference in my husband's chosen profession from the "normal" Monday through Friday, 9-5, fifty weeks a year, two week vacation careers. I believe that it will give our life structure with a natural ebb and flow of work and fun. Somehow this feels more natural to me than the above "norm". It seems to me that man is supposed to have "circles" in his life. The world we live in is full of cycles: the days of the week, months, the seasons, the sun and moon, life and death. The list goes on . . .
(I can't talk about the Circle of Life without a Lion King reference, can I?)
How unnatural and unCatholic! Spring is when the new year begins, when all things in God's creation are renewed.
ReplyDeleteYou disgust me.
Just kidding. I do not care at all.
My Dear Disgruntled Reader: I believe the most "Catholic" view of when the new year begins would correspond with the Liturgical Calendar--which would be in November, a time when God's creation lacks a certain brightness.
ReplyDelete;-)
I've only just now seen this, and while I have no recollection of writing the first comment, there is only one Black Fox, so it must've been me.
ReplyDeletePope Gregory the XIII, as you may know, established the Gregorian Calendar, which is how the year is defined and tracked almost universally around the world, but certainly in Catholic, and later, Christian countries.
That is the Catholic way of calculating a year.
The thing which you refer to is the Liturgical year, and it would be more accurate to say a "Catholic year" in that spiritual sense actually starts on Christmas (indeed, some Catholic countries in medieval times adopted this as their start of the "new year", but not advent). Advent is but a preparation, and considering in many places fall leaves are still about, November is hardly a time that lacks brightness!
Rather the year *does* actually transition in our calendar at a time that corresponds to the natural cyclical, seasonal changes of the Earth's journey around the sun, in the "dead" of winter, when God's creation does indeed lack that brightness to which you allude, and which, so happens, was a natural cycle created by... God. And hopefully, He is Catholic. Or we are in alot of trouble.
You're welcome.