Ancient Wisdom & New Year’s Resolutions

by Caroline Lawrence

I read ancient authors almost daily and am always surprised by how relevant they are. (Usually!) Here are my ten New Year’s resolutions based on ancient authors, some with links to advice for modern application. Maybe some of them will inspire you, too!

1. Examine Your Life – Socrates (Greek 5th century BC)
Socrates famously said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ The bleak midwinter is the yearly equivalent of four in the morning, when all our fears rise to the surface of consciousness. Don’t push them back down. Take them out and examine them one by one. One way to do this is something like Morning Pages where you write a stream of consciousness first thing. Check out a 3-minute clip HERE.

2. Know Thyself. – Anonymous (Greek 6th century BC)
This slogan was written in Greek on temple of Apollo at Delphi. It’s not entirely sure who first coined it but many philosophers have echoed it ever since. According to Yuval Noah Harari, algorithms already know more about us than we do ourselves. (Watch a revelatory interview with Harari HERE). Until they make the ‘Know Thyself’ app, I’m going to constantly ask myself why I’m taking certain actions from little (online purchases) to big (the nature of my next project). 

3. Let Your Food Be Medicine – Hippocrates (Greek 5th century BC)
The reason we make New Year’s Resolutions now is because of the two weeks of overindulgence we’ve just experienced, telling ourselves ‘It’s the holidays... Let the regime go for a while.’ That’s fine. That’s why winter is a time for feasting. And why Lent is a time for fasting. Two and a half thousand years ago the ‘father of medicine’ urged people to eat for health, but fasts were also part of the ancient health regime. Sometimes a lack of food is good for the body and lets it recover. I started the new year with a ‘diatritos’, a three day fast, and will try to fast for a couple of days each month. HERE is a short introduction to fasting.

4. Withdraw into Yourself as Far as You Can – Seneca (Latin 1st century AD)
Recede in te ipsum, quantum potes. (Letters 7.8) The first century AD Roman Stoic philosopher seemed to be talking about something like meditation or mindfulness. I’m going to try to meditate every day and take stock, even if only for a few minutes. Try a short 3-minute version HERE. 

5. Always Be On Your Guard – Marcus Aurelius (Greek 2nd century AD)
Wise words from the second century AD Stoic philosopher and emperor. The full quote is this. ‘The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, you should always be on your guard.’ (Meditations 7.61) Whether on the streets of London or posting on Twitter, I’m going to try to be alert to danger and let my intuition warn me. 

6. Take Power Naps – Pliny (Latin 1st AD)
He was a most ready sleeper, insomuch that he would sometimes, whilst in the midst of his studies, fall off and then wake up again… [After lunch] he generally took a cold bath, then some light refreshment and a little nap. After this, as if it had been a new day, he studied till supper-time… Pliny Letters 27. As I get older, I am learning to take power naps before they take me. Read Pliny the Younger’s account of his Uncle’s daily routine HERE. 

7. Keep Fit – Juvenal (Latin 1st AD)
Mens sana in corpore sano can be translated as ‘a healthy mental outlook in a fit body’. You don’t have to join a gym or invest in new trainers. We all know the ways to increase daily movement like getting off the tube a stop earlier or taking the stairs instead of a lift. I love walking but my knee is getting a bit stiff so I’ve now started to supplement walking with a short yoga session first thing in the comfort of my own home via YouTube or DVD. My favourite is Rodney Yee. 

8. Hurry Slowly – Augustus via Suetonius (Latin 1st AD)
I do things quickly. Sometimes too quickly. The Roman historian Suetonius, in De vita Caesarum, tells that Augustus deplored rashness in a military commander, thus σπεῦδε βραδέως or festina lente in Latin was one of his favourite sayings. I resolve to be quick but not impulsive. 

9. Treat Others As You Would Like to be Treated – Jesus (Greek 1st AD)
In Matthew 7:12, Jesus states the so-called Golden Rule which he got from Hillel the Elder, a first century BC Jewish sage. We know it in our heads (and hearts) but it goes against the survival instinct of our reptile brain. I had a revelation recently while teaching John Truby’s seven beat plot structure, which includes the Desire and the Opponent. We often consider people as opponents or barriers to things we want, but in God’s eyes it is the people who are important, not the things we want. 

10. Delight Yourself in the LORD... – King David (Hebrew 10th century BC)

...And He will give you the desires of your heart completes the promise. We can be overwhelmed by the suffering and stupidity in the world around us, and be tempted to despair. But we live lives of greater comfort and luxury than almost any generation before us. I am going to count my blessings, say thank you to the Universe and delight myself in God and His creation. For me, this verse from Psalm 37 is the most important resolution of all. 

Gnothi Sauton = Gnothi Seauton = Know Thyself

Mary and Jesus as refugees by Janie Hampton

'Rest on the Flight into Egypt' by Bonifazio de Pitati (1487– 1553) 

Once Christmas Day is over, we tend to forget about the small family in a stable in Bethlehem, and what they did next. I’ve been wondering about Mary, and how she coped as a new young mother, in a strange town, with no home or family. We only know what the gospels of Luke and Matthew chose to write about the birth and first weeks of Jesus' life. Matthew tells us that Mary was a virgin, but Joseph her ‘espoused’ learned that she was pregnant, and not by him. An angel told him not to worry, because ‘that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.’ So he agreed to marry her, and Jesus was born in Bethlehem. That’s all he has to say about the Nativity.

The Flight into Egypt by Battista Dossi and Dosso Dossi, c.1530, with two donkeys!

Luke gives much more detail. Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem for a Roman taxation census. While in Bethlehem, Mary ‘brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.’ Shepherds and wise men came to worship him, and when Jesus was eight days old he was circumcised according to Jewish law. Meanwhile Mary stayed indoors for 40 days until ‘the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished.’ Then they went to Jerusalem on their way north, where they offered a sacrifice of two turtledoves. After that Jesus ‘grew and waxed strong in spirit’ back at home in Nazareth.
Both accounts were written over 60 years after the events, and by men, so there is no mention of the things women might be interested in. How long was the labour? Did it start while they were travelling the 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem? The journey would have taken them at least four days on foot. As a carpenter, Joseph could well have owned a donkey for carrying his tools and timber. Christmas cards often depict Mary on a donkey out of sympathy for her predicament as a full-term primigravida, though she might have walked all the way.
As Joseph came originally from Bethlehem, he probably had relatives living there. Joseph’s mother, sister or an aunt may have accompanied Mary through her labour, cut the umbilical cord and disposed of the placenta. Jesus was then ‘laid in a manger’ - a net or wooden box containing hay for cattle – a prickly place for a baby! A manger (from the French word ‘to eat’) can be attached to a wall, a practical way of keeping a new-born baby safe from dogs and draughts while Mary was sleeping.
Bethlehem is at a high altitude and it could have been very cold, so Mary would have kept her new baby close to her body most of the time. We don’t know if they stayed in the stable for the 40 days Mary had to wait for her purification, a time of post-partum bleeding, or lochia. Hopefully, Joseph’s female relatives provided Mary with the necessary cloths which she then washed, and hung up to dry?
Matthew next tells of wise men from the East who visited the new baby, and warned his parents to return home by a different route, as King Herod wanted to kill the baby. Sometime after they returned to Nazareth, Joseph was warned in a dream to take the child to safety in Egypt. They left immediately by night, becoming refugees.
Matthew’s account does not say when they had to flee to Egypt, but King Herod had ordered all boys under two years old to be slaughtered – indicating Jesus must have been about 20 months.

As the many depictions have imagined the holy refugees,
Jesus was probably still being breastfed.

They probably took the Via Maris – a well-trodden trade route along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, that ran from Damascus to Memphis in Egypt. The journey from Nazareth to Abu Serghis, on the far side of the River Nile where tradition has it they settled, is about 500 miles. Google Map estimates this takes 150 hours to walk. So if the family kept up a pace of 8 hours a day, that would have taken them three weeks without breaks. Jesus would have been carried much of the way, breastfed every few hours; and Mary may well have had a menstrual period en route. Imagine her discomfort while walking or sitting on a donkey, with just cloth rags. There are many mediaeval and renaissance paintings of Mary breastfeeding Jesus. She is shown with a bounteous supply of milk and fullsome breasts, and Jesus is a well-fed chubby boy.

Giotto Bondone was one of many major artists who depicted the Flight from Egypt.

‘The Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ became a common depiction in the life of Christ after the 14th century. As interest in landscape painting increased, the subject became even more popular and the figures were often shown in European scenery.  The paintings are lovely but the conditions would have been much harsher in AD 2, with the risk of bandits as well as desert conditions of starvation, heat and cold. Until recently few historians have thought about how women dealt with menstruation in ordinary life, let alone as refugees, or women in the Bible. What was it really like? To recapture this experience, we can look at female refugees fleeing from war now. The testimony of the two women in this film, made in a refugee camp in Malawi two months ago, gives us an insight. Alphonsine and Pendeza are both Christians, but almost certainly unaware that their unintended journeys across Africa were similar to Mary’s 2000 years ago. I hope that they, like she was, are able to return to their homes one day soon.

'From Rags to Cups - Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi. ' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR9S3GU_6pM&feature=youtu.be 

Illustrated Bibles of my childhood, as depicted by Scott Orr circa 1930. 

All quotes are from the King James Bible, published in English in 1611.

www.janiehampton.co.uk