Keeping Company :: December Invitation

Hello, friends!  It's the very first day of December, and I want to invite you to join in our sharing of Charlotte Mason-style notebooking for this last month of the year.

December can be a busy time, but all of us, I think, look for the pockets of quiet that colder temperatures bring.  One of my favorite winter activities is cozying up with a hot cup of coffee and a good book--and, of course, adding my favorite bits to my commonplace.  Or grabbing some fallen leaves and winter berries from a frosty nature walk and journaling our outing over a hot cup of tea.

I'm not getting all that much Keeping done right now with babe in arms, but I am making plans for when I have two free hands and more sleep!  And, of course, I have your wonderful entries to enjoy while I wait.

This Month's Feature
Amy posted a lovely poem from her commonplace this month that suggests the hard but worthy work of the mind and gives a glimpse into the thoughts of a Keeper.  I'm going to share it here in the hope that it will inspire you all.  And do check out the lovely fall photos she shared alongside.  A pitch-perfect pairing!  From Wendell Berry's A Timbered Choir:

Coming to the woods' edge.
on my Sunday morning walk,
I stand resting a moment beside
a ragged half-dead wild plum
in bloom, its perfume
a moment enclosing me,
and standing side by side
with the old broken blooming tree,
I almost understand,
I almost recognize as a friend
the great impertinence of beauty
that comes even to the dying,
even to the fallen, without reason
sweetening the air.

I walk on,
distracted by a letter accusing me
of distraction, which distracts me
only from the hundred things
that would otherwise distract me
from this whiteness, lightness,
sweetness in the air. The mind
is broken by the thousand
calling voices it is always too late
to answer, and that is why it yearns
for some hard task, lifelong, longer
than life, to concentrate it
and make it whole.

Amy's commonplace is full of all sorts of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty--take a look!



This Month's Optional Prompt
As I said at the beginning, we always experience a renewed interest in journaling during the winter months, when we spend more time indoors.

If you're like us and letting some Keeping fill your cozy corners amid the holiday bustle, feel free to share: What kinds of wintery nature outings have you enjoyed?  What are you reading--and commonplacing--by the fire with cocoa in hand?  Do you continue your more school-ish Keeping like foreign language journals and Books of Centuries, or do you break for the holidays?  I'd love to see how December looks in your notebooks!

I'll be back here next Tuesday, December 8th, to post this month's link-up.  Until then, head over to the November collection to see what you've missed so far this month!