of italy and grapes and galileo

Who doesn’t love Italy?

I mean, really–what’s not to love?  Although I have never been there, I do have the internet, and have seen my share of romantic comedies to know that Italy is beauty personified.  Also, Italy is apparently home to people who are always laughing and eating and falling in love and speaking English with romantic, warm, delicious Italian accents.

Beautiful, Warm People Who Love Eating...

Again–what’s not to love?

So, with my love of Italy comes my love of vineyards.  Not because I love wine (I don’t drink it), but because they are absolutely magnificent.

Beautiful Italy

I love pictures of vineyards, with their rows and rows of grapes. And it doesn’t have to be a vineyard.  I love plain old grape farms, too.  That just doesn’t sound as romantic or cosmopolitan as vineyards.

So, I was particularly struck by the words of Galileo Galilei today.  He was talking about grapes.  I have always been fond of Galileo.  I have always admired his intellectual courage.

Galileo

I have always been drawn to the fact that he was ever out of favor with the popular crowd because he couldn’t help using his “caustic wit” to expose their foolishness.  I have always felt that when Galileo was arguing against “the Church” regarding heliocentrism, that he was not against the Gospel, but against ignorance.  He loved truth. So does God.  I don’t see a conflict there.  He once said:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Another something he once said is lovely to me:

I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

But, back to the grapes.

Magnificent

You see, there is one thing he said that relates to motherhood in such a profound way that it just took my breath away.  And it’s about the grapes:

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Sometimes I feel like there are so many things outside of my home that are pulling at me–and I feel like so many things depend on me, but what Galileo reminded me of today is that the job of nurturing and growing my children–the one that appears to others (and sometimes, I admit, even to me) to be insignificant, monotonous, draining…stifling–I should be doing as if I had nothing else in the universe to do.

What would happen I actually spent even a day or two as if I had nothing else in the universe to do but nurture their growing souls with my warmth?  It’s not that the other things I have to do would go away–but I think I would realize that most things in my life would just work out without me having to be so…busy and encumbered.

I thought about that a lot today.  I thought about how if I could do that, my family would be like the romantic version of the vineyards and country I love so much.

Magnificent. Lovely. Happy. Delicious.

I know, I know.  I am not the Sun.  But what a wonderful reminder of what I should be like.

After all, I may not be the center of this part of the universe–but I am at the heart of theirs.

Thank you, Galileo

Thank you, Galileo, my friend.  Lesson learned.

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Tagged as: insights from motherhood, quotes