{From My Commonplace} :: For the Holidays

For all of us mamas that need a reminder this holiday season...

"'And presently the ship was at the land to which they were going.' That land was the sea-shore of Capharnum, from which they had pushed off so joyfully a few hours before in expectation of a whole holiday alone with their Master. How different the day had turned out! Holidays often turn out very differently from what we expect. Our Lord has, many a time, lessons for us which we had not looked for, and which are not quite to our taste. Something happens that does not fit in with the plans for enjoyment we had made for ourselves. Disappointment comes to us as to the Twelve. What are we to do then? As the Apostles did. Were they upset? No. They trusted themselves entirely to their dear Master. They let him have His own way with them, and they were beginning to find out that His way was, after all, the happiest and the best."

-- from Mother Mary Loyola's First Communion

She goes on to say that had they enjoyed the holiday they had planned, they would not have had the chance to see Our Lord healing the sick, ministering to them in deed and word, giving his hillside sermon they all so needed to hear. And it the evening following that He walked to them across the water and the next day that He preached the Holy Eucharist in the synagogue. It seems that what the Twelve needed was just exactly that day after all and not the kind of day they may have had in mind.

{From My Pre-Reading Journal}

I usually share excerpts {From My Commonplace}, but this time around, I'm sharing some quotes from my Reading Journal, where I keep favorite selections from my pre-reading.

These two books were talking to each other this week...

"What is perhaps worse, though, was the damage done in creating laws that a significant minority of Americans would be disinclined to obey, laws which moreover could never be seriously enforced. In doing so, the architects of Prohibition had seriously undermined respect for the law itself."

-- from McClay's Land of Hope

"Now, such cruel punishments as these did harm in many ways. In the first place, it did harm to the whole people to be accustomed to see justice done by such bad means. Men who see an example of cruelty and carelessness for human life set by those in high places, and approved of by the law, are in danger of becoming themselves cruel and careless."
-- from Arnold-Forster's The Laws of Every-day Life

I'm reading Ourselves right now too, and between that and my Form 3 kids' other reading, there's just so much to consider about integrity, justice, the true meaning of law, and more. So timely in our political climate.

{From My Commonplace}

I have been doing a good amount of reading lately, but not a lot of sharing about it. I think a What We're Reading post is overdue!

In the meantime, a couple snippets from my commonplace, one from my educational philosophy notebook and one from my fiction notebook (I like to keep them separate)...

"The resourcefulness which will enable a family of children to invent their own games and occupations through the length of a summer's day is worth more in the after life than a good deal of knowledge about cubes and hexagons, and this comes, not of continual intervention on the mother's part, but of much masterly inactivity."

-- Charlotte Mason's Home Education, p. 192 

"No, what he must decide in the microcosm of his one being, was the same decision that lay before all his people. Would he keep himself separate, dedicated to a faith that made him solitary among whatever people he lived, or would he pour the stream of his life into the rich ocean of all human life about him? Does he lose himself in that ocean? But would he be lost? Nothing was ever lost. What he was, his ancestors in him, his children to come from him, would deepen the ocean, but they could not be lost."

-- Pearl Buck's Peony, p. 189

{From My Commonplace}

Just as powerful for mothers as for children:

"He was St. Joseph's assistant now, learning from him how to do the village carpentry, to make yokes and ploughs and the rough cottage furniture, learning to do it all in St. Joseph's way. It was a rude unskilful way we may be sure, and the clumsiest joiner nowadays would turn out more shapely work. Our Lord might well have been St. Joseph's teacher, and shown him how to do better. But that was not what He wanted. He was there in the shop to humble Himself, to be obedient, and thus to teach us something far more important than good carpentry. What He wanted was not to do the work in the best way possible, but to do it as He was told."

from Mother Mary Loyola's First Communion

{From My Commonplace} :: Finer Oil

"The olive oil produced in those two sections, from the very nature of climatic conditions, is the finest in the world, because the nearer the cultivator reaches the point where the olives cannot be grown, the finer becomes the quality of oil."

-- from Nellie Allen's The New Europe

There's a metaphor in there somewhere...

{From My Commonplace} :: Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Stories

"What moved and astonished me was that he knew no nursery rhymes and fairy stories. He had read Dostoevsky, Proust, he read Aristotle and Sophocles in Greek. He had read Chaucer and Spenser. He was musical. He could analyse Shostakovich and Bartok. He quoted Schopenhauer. But he didn't know Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, The Three Bears, Red Riding-Hood. He knew the story of Cinderella only through Rossini's opera. And all that sweet lyricism of our Anglo-Saxon childhood, a whole culture with rings on its fingers and bells on its toes, had been lost to him in that infancy of slums and smelly drains, rats and pawnshops, street prostitutes, curses, rags, and hacking coughs, freezing bare feet and no Prince Charmings, which had been the lot of the really poor in the years between the first and second world wars."

--from A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark

I have heard Muriel Spark recommended several times over the past decade, but only now decided to pick up one of her books. What a treat. She is such an engaging writer: funny, insightful, poignant, natural prose. Quite a few passages made their way into my commonplace, but this one in particular seemed such a sobering companion to our educational project as mother-teachers.

{From My Commonplace} :: Pre-Reading Edition

One of my annual goals is to keep up with pre-reading my Year 7 students' books. I choose to privilege that reading over personal reading at times partly because of  my personality -- I feel better about our homeschool when I know I am prepared. It allows me to rest in the process much more peacefully and engage with my children more joyfully.

But I also privilege it because the books are just plain wonderful. There are so many quotes that speak to other reading I am doing, so many big ideas to chew on, such rich style. I am constantly making entries into my Reading Journal.

Here are a few from just this past week, split into To Be and Not To Be. :)

To Be

Let's be Romans -- in thorough preparation!

Let's see inside our kids and believe in them-- let's be Joan.

Not to Be

First, I love a good metaphor. Let's not be like the Lycosa!

And let's not be short-sighted, narrowly-focused and utilitarian.

As I read, I am reminded of the Way of the Will chart mentioned in The Living Page. Interesting how the Romans are both "to be" and "not to be" this week, depending on what measuring stick we're using.

And can't we say the same of so much?

{From My Commonplace} :: Spring Partridges

"Very soon the first bluebird came flying over and warbled as he flew, The spring is coming. The sun kept gaining, and early one day in the dark of the Wakening Moon of March there was a loud Caw, caw and old Silverspot, the king crow, came swininging along from the south at the head of his troops and officially announced,

 THE SPRING HAS COME.

"All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds' New Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to move them. The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their Spring now, spring now now -- Spring now now, so persistently that one wondered how they found time to get a living.

"And Redruff felt it thrill him through the through.  He sprang with joyous vigor on a stump and sent rolling down the little valley again and again a thundering Thump, thump, thunderrrrrrrrr, that wakened dull echoes as it rolled and voiced his gladness in the coming of the spring."

-- from Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known

(Seton's partridges made me smile because I have a few birdies of my own who seem to go wild with joy and life when spring arrives. I'm guessing you do too.)

Education is an Atmosphere :: {From My Commonplace} and More

Last week, some lovely ladies and I launched an Instagram community called Charlotte Mason In Real Life.  This wasn't my idea -- my e-friend Angela Reed is the brain child behind the project -- and I didn't choose last week's theme of Atmosphere.  But this invitation presented the perfect opportunity to share some thoughts that have been on my mind and heart for the last year or so on the role atmosphere plays as a tool in our homeschool.

My thoughts here are pulled from my Instagram feed over the course of that week of pondering the theme, plus a little bonus commonplace chat at the end that I didn't get a chance to share there but I think is relevant.  Just think of this as a little philosophical meandering...

~~~

My dryer broke this morning.  And this week we're talking about ATMOSPHERE at Charlotte Mason In Real Life!  This sounds like a bit of irony, but it is actually a perfect fit, and I'll tell you why.

I find atmosphere most often gets translated as decor in the homeschool world, when Miss Mason had a far broader vision.  It is not about pristine spaces, just the right books lined up just the right way, quiet during lessons, or any of the other bits we might long for as homeschool mothers.  In fact, I would argue that sometimes those elements might hamper the kind of atmosphere she had in mind -- when we pursue them to the neglect of the attitudes and actions that actually form our children's characters.

Atmosphere involves anything that the child takes in through his environment without direct instruction.  It molds not just his receptivity to lessons, but also his development of virtue, which is why it is one of the three tools of education.  And here's the most important bit: we are using it -- to our advantage or disadvantage -- whether we're meaning to or not.

From Volume 2:

"They are held in that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he breathes as his breath of life; and this atmosphere in which the child inspires his unconscious ideas of right living emanates from his parents. Every look of gentleness and tone of reverence, every word of kindness and act of help, passes into the thought-environment, the very atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think of these things, may never think of them, but all his life long they excite that ‘vague appetency towards something’ out of which most of his actions spring. Oh, wonderful and dreadful presence of the little child in the midst! 

"That he should take direction and inspiration from all the casual life about him, should make our poor words and ways the starting-point from which, and in the direction of which, he develops––this is a thought which makes the best of us hold our breath. There is no way of escape for parents; they must needs be as ‘inspirers’ to their children, because about them hangs, as its atmosphere about a planet the thought-environment of the child, from which he derives those enduring ideas which express themselves as a life-long ‘appetency’ towards things sordid or things lovely, things earthly or divine."

It is a humbling vision.  But it also promises us that we can change it, right here and now, through our choices.  We don't need more money (to remodel the schoolroom!) or more quiet (maybe we can somehow offload that pesky toddler?). Our efforts in these directions DO AFFECT atmosphere, but they don't DEFINE it.

The tone we choose for our homeschool day, and our reponse when our days go awry (as they do), defines our atmosphere.  Showing our children what we value by giving those things pride of place in our homes defines our atmosphere.  How we treat one another defines our atmosphere.

So -- back to my broken dryer.  This is no small tragedy for a family of ten!  But the "mess" of wet clothes that are now hanging here and there around the house don't affect our atmosphere much at all.  My response to the dryer breaking DOES.  I can choose to be upset about it, or I can choose to calmly make a plan.  I can speed through lessons so as to do online appliance shopping, or I can adjust our schedule to accommodate the interruption.  My children can learn from their environment that difficulties can be handled with grace and patience, that rushing through lessons to "get them done" does an injustice to their value, and that habits of order and cleanliness really are blessings to those that cultivate them -- and which we sometimes feel most keenly by their lack.  Which is why my husband is headed to Home Depot straight after work. ;)

~~~

Although Charlotte Mason's vision for atmosphere has more to do with attitudes than aesthetics, she doesn't ignore aesthetics entirely.  We are both body and soul, after all, and we were created for beauty and order.  The spaces we spend our day in absolutely help to set the tone for our homeschooling.

But thankfully, we don't need to have picture-perfect rooms to create an environment that inspires virtue, encourages joy, and speaks to what we believe about life and learning.

Our home is nothing special decor-wise.  It is a place I am grateful for and it fits our style as a family.  There are also things I would love to change about it. ;) But that doesn't keep it from helping to cultivate our family culture.

What we display, how we order our rooms, where we do lessons -- these all depend on family needs, priorities, and yes, limitations too. Here's a peek at how that combination has worked out in our home and what I hope our ordinary spaces say about our educational philosophy to my kids.

This is our dining room, where we do much of our work.  We also eat all of our meals here, because when you have ten people in your family, you can't get away with just using the eat-in kitchen. ;) The furniture is functional but plain and we have more baby gear around than the average family, but it is tidy and gets beautiful light.  I hope having this space organized and ready for work inspires my children to cultivate their own habit of tidiness and makes them feel calm even when the house is (very) loud around them.

This is a small office we use for overflow schooling: music lessons happen on the opposite wall, and these "desks" are for when a student needs more quiet than the craziness of our home usually allows. Eventually, I'd love to decorate it properly. But I hope the fact that I took the time to carve out this space and have tried to make it uncluttered and useful sets a tone for the work that takes place here.

These are our nature books and seasonal tray, along with a display of my children's artwork.  This is prominent, right at our front entry, and tells people who enter what we value and gives my children pride in what we do. (The stacks on top are waiting to be shelved...when I can find room for them. I know you fellow booklovers can relate!)

Immediately in front of you when you walk into our home, these bookshelves line our downstairs hall and hold religion, adult fiction, and the AO books that aren't currently in use.  I'm partly sharing this because, well, who can resist a shelfie? :)  And partly because I hope they set a certain tone for our home space.  They tell my children: we enjoy quality books, we think they are worth lining our walls with, and if you are looking for a particular title, I probably have it. ;)

~~~

And a bonus {From My Commonplace}...

As a mama-example of the Science of Relations, I encountered this quote in my reading from this week that tied right back to the atmosphere discussion as well as to a {From My Commonplace} quote I had in my drafts folder from way back in December.  The perfect time to feature it, despite it being rather unseasonally from A Christmas Carol.  You'll see why in a moment.

From this week's reading from Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth (emphasis mine):

"All through the latter part of the last summer and early fall Per Hansa had done a full man's work plus a bit more; nor had he spared the boys, either. And he had hired a number of men besides. He needed all the help he could get; for there was the new house to build, the crops to be harvested, the fall plowing that must be done, and in addition, all the other work about the farm. But he had gone about his duties in a mood that made any task easy for himself and for those who worked with him."

And from my reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol a few months ago, in which Scrooge speaks of his early employer:

"He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil.  Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

These quotes embody a big part of what Charlotte Mason had in mind as the tools of the teacher-mother...

Yes, our children need good habits that enable them to choose the right even when it's not easy (Education is a Discipline).

And they need worthy work that's full of rich ideas, the proper food of the mind (Education is a Life).

But they also need that Atmosphere that makes work seem a joy, that trades difficulty for challenge, that models what virtue is, why we make the choices we do, what we value, how we find delight in the midst of life.

Isn't that what it's all about?  Haven't you experienced this yourself? And if it is true, ought not we to make use of it, for our own sakes and our students'?

(Preaching to myself here today!)

{From My Commonplace} :: For the First Day of February

These are vocation-altering, purpose-giving, perspective-changing words.  Read and ponder and let them change the way you view those February doldrums.

"What Aslang complained about till she positively shrieked -- that housework was so monotonous: no sooner had she prepared a meal than it was eaten up, and then it was soon time to think of another, and when one had washed up and put things away, one knew that in a couple hours' time one would have to take them out again and let the others dirty them, and the rooms had to be done and the beds made every day simply in order that folks should get into them again at night.  There was something in that, of course. But she herself thought one might also look at it in this way: that it was the good happy moments when one had finished one's work that recurred -- when she had finished the morning's work and put the rooms in order, when for instance she had got the stove to burn nicely, with the window still open so that she felt the fresh draught of air through the room -- or when supper was laid in the kitchen with something out of the ordinary and she could call the boys in.  Getting a thing off her hands she had always liked."

 -- from Sigrid Undset's Ida Elizabeth (emphasis mine, because it's just too good)

{From My Commonplace} :: Thinking about Singing

It was lovely timing to happen upon these passages from Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow a few months ago, just as we were finishing up our school year and my mind had begun thinking about the next.  Such an inspiring look at the how and why of a life enriched by traditional songs.

Wendell Berry on folk music:

"They would greet me and one another as they came in.  They took chairs, sat down, commented on the weather and other events, smoked maybe. 

"And then one or another of them would pick up his fiddle or guitar or banjo (you could never tell who it would be) and begin to tune it, plucking at the strings individually and listening.  And then another would begin, and another. It was done almost bashfully, as if they feared that the silence might not welcome their music.  Little sequences of notes would be picked out randomly here and there. (Their instruments just happened to be in their hands. The power of music-making had overtaken them by surprise, and they had to grow used to it.) 

"Finally Bill Mixter would lower his head, lay his bow upon the strings, and draw out the first notes of a tune, and the others would come in behind him. The music, while it lasted, brought a new world into being. They would play some tunes they had learned off the radio, but their knowledge was far older than that and they played too the music that was native to the place, or that the people of the place were native to.  Just the names of the tunes were a kind of music; they call back the music to my mind still, after so many years: 'Sand Riffle, 'Last Gold Dollar,' 'Billy in the Low Ground,' 'Gate to Go Through,' and a lot of others. 'A fiddle, now, is an atmospheric thing,' said Burley Coulter. The music was another element filling the room and pouring out through the cracks."

And on hymns...

"What I liked least about the service itself was the prayers; what I liked far better was the singing. Not all of the hymns could move me.  I never liked 'Onward Christian Soldiers' or 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.'  Jesus' military career has never compelled my belief.  I liked the sound of the people singing together, whatever they sang, but some of the hymns reached into me all the way to the bone: 'Come, Thou Font of Every Blessing,' 'Rock of Ages,' 'Amazing Grace,' 'O God, Our Help in Ages Past.' I loved the different voices all singing one song, the various tones and qualities, the passing lifts of feeling, rising up and going out forever.  Old Man Profet, who was a different man on Sunday, used to draw out the notes at the ends of verses and refrains so he could listen to himself, and in fact it sounded pretty.  And when the congregation would be singing 'We shall see the King some-day (some-day),' Sara May, who often protracted Saturday night a little too far into Sunday morning, would sing, 'I shall see the King some-day (Sam May).' 

"I thought that some of the hymns bespoke of the true religion of the place.  The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world.  They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all if had given them, but they still liked it.  That they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to love one another and to forgive and be forgiven, their need for one another's help and company and divine gifts, their hope (and experience) of love surpassing death, their gratitude.  I loved to hear them sing 'The Unclouded Day' and 'Sweet By and By': 

We shall sing on that beautiful shore 

The melodious songs on the blest... 

"And in times of sorrow when they sang 'Abide with Me,' I could not raise my head."

Hymns and folk songs aren't just memory work.  They are memory work, in that we hope they lodge in our children's memories and abide there for always.  But the door to the memory isn't just the mind.  We aren't treating the memory as a faculty -- as simply a means to an end, something to use and exercise, with the goal being as much knowledge as our students' minds can hold.  We are treating memory as a gift, one that we may enter sweetly, gently, delightfully, calmly through the mind, but also through the heart and soul, the ear and eye, the community, our faith, sacred spaces, family moments, shared experience, relationship.

It is a beautiful thing, our memory.  As Robinson shares in Gilead, which I was fortuitously reading at the same time as Berry's book, memory is pure gift:

"I wish I could give you the memory I have of your mother that day. I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own sort of mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a gracious reprieve." (emphasis mine)

In that vein, we can view hymns and folk songs as memory contained in song, and when we play them for our students, we give them the opportunity to enter into a collective experience of beauty in word and tune.  More than that, we can think of learning those songs as an invitation to add our own layer of texture to the song, as our family memories of singing them bind together with that collective experience and create something moving and special -- something new to us yet linked to all that came before us.

That is a powerful invitation and beyond anything a checklist can convey, no matter how masterfully crafted.  When we play, sing, or even just listen to a song, we open a space for the Holy Spirit to move and stir our soul.  It's a beautiful thought.

May we always think of memory work as a gracious reprieve!

{From My Commonplace}

"Think of the joy of the mother who should overhear her little child murmuring over the first primrose of the year, 'Dear God, you are too good!' Children are so imitative, that if they hear their parents speak out continually their joys and fears, their thanks and wishes, they, too, will have many things to say."

 -- from Charlotte Mason's Parents and Children, page 56

our primroses

mama's thanksgiving

cate's thanksgiving

{From My Commonplace} :: Just and Only

I was catching up in my commonplace this week and came upon this passage from Gilead about one of my favorite words to overuse...

"In writing this, I notice that it costs me not to use certain words more than I ought to. I am thinking about the word "just." I almost wish I could have written that the sun just shone and the tree just glistened, and the water just poured out of it and the girl just laughed--when it's used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to call attention to a think existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity of lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree. So it seems to me in the moment. There is something real signified by the word "just" that proper language won't acknowledge. I regret that I must deprive myself of it. It takes half the point out of telling the story."

 -- from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

Besides being a lovely reflection on the simple beauties of life and a careful consideration of the craft of writing, it reminded me of another passage I read this week with the kids in Madam How and Lady Why, which was both extraordinarily funny and wise:

"What is that coming down the hill?

"Oh, only some chalk-carts.

"Only some chalk-carts? It seems to me that these chalk-carts are the very things we want; that if we follow them far enough--I do not mean with our feet along the public road, but with our thoughts along a road which, I am sorry to say, the public do not yet know much about--we shall come to a cave, and understand how a cave is made. Meanwhile, do not be in a hurry to say, 'Only a chalk-cart,' or only a mouse, or only a dead leaf. Chalk-carts, like mice, and dead leaves, and most other matters in the universe are very curious and odd things in the eyes of wise and reasonable people. Whenever I hear young men saying 'only' this and 'only' that, I begin to suspect them of belonging, not to the noble army of sages--much less to the most noble army of martyrs,--but to the ignoble army of noodles, who think nothing interesting or important but dinners, and balls, and races, and back-biting their neighbours; and I should be sorry to see you enlisting in that regiment when you grow up. But think--are not chalk-carts very odd and curious things? I think they are. To my mind, it is a curious question how men ever thought of inventing wheels; and, again, when they first thought of it. It is a curious question, too, how men ever found out that they could make horses work for them, and so began to tame them, instead of eating them, and a curious question (which I think we shall never get answered) when the first horse-tamer lived, and in what country. And a very curious, and, to me, a beautiful sight it is, to see those two noble horses obeying that little boy, whom they could kill with a single kick."

 -- from Kinglsey's Madam How and Lady Why

Obviously, these two selections are talking about different things: one refers to a word that emphasizes the words around it (until it gets overused and loses its effect) and the other refers to a word which de-emphasizes.  Similarly, though, these examples speak to the power of a single simple word to heighten or minimize a point.  They both speak to the importance of language.

What struck me, however, was that only and just can mean both the same thing and the exact opposite:  "Only a chalk-cart" and  "just a chalk-cart" mean the same thing.  But in the Gilead-ic (can that be a word?) sense, just works in another way entirely.

So intriguing.

I'm not going anywhere special with this except to say that reading multiple books at once forges all these small, unexpected connections.  I never thought my fourth grader's earth science text and my Lenten novel would have anything in common!

And I certainly never thought my fourth grader's earth science text would get me thinking about minute linguistic distinctions.  But it did, partly because it's a living book and has that capacity, and partly because when you are a literature-lover, you can't help but pull out the literary bits to fawn over.  That's part of the Science of Relations too. :)

I'll be taking a break from posting for the Triduum, so I wish you a blessed time and will be back here on the blog next week!  (In the meantime, you can probably find me sharing snippets of Holy Week and Easter on Instagram. ;))

{From My Commonplace}

A bit from my religious commonplace book on a rainy day...

"For she knew why all this was done.  Long before St. Paul, she had said: 'He loved me and delivered Himself for me.' It was to get her her wondrous graces, to do great things for her, that He had emptied Himself of His glory and come down upon earth.  She could not get used to these thoughts. They never lost their freshness.  She gazed and gazed upon Him with untiring love and thankfulness, and ever-growing wonder and delight. And as she gazed, the virtue of His Sacred Humanity went out to her, as later to the needy, suffering crowd.  For to look lovingly at Jesus in the mysteries of His human life is to draw into our own lives the virtues of His.  But we must give it time.  O that we had a little of our Mother's habit of pondering; blessed habit, it has made the Church's saints in every age!"

-- from Mother Mary Loyola's Hail Full of Grace (also available free online)

{From My Commonplace}

"To really touch something, she is learning--the bark of a sycamore in the gardens; a pinned stag beetle in the Department of Entymology; the exquisitely polished interior of a scallop shell in Dr. Geffard's workshop--is to love it."

-- from Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See

{From My Commonplace}

Last week I was reading bits of Parents and Children and found some helpful justification from Miss Mason for a few of my favorite hobbies:

Feel like ditching school to spend a day at the beach?  Here's what she says about nature study for moms:

"The knowledge of Nature which we get out of books is not real knowledge; the use of books is, to help the young student verify facts has has already seen for himself.  Let us, before all things, be Nature-lovers." (p. 254)

Wondering if you should spend that extra fifteen minutes cleaning the kitchen or enjoying your current read with a cup of tea?  Let's see what she might say about that...

"it is only so far as he is intellectually alive that he can be effective in the wonderful process which we glibly call 'education.'" (p. 279)

Spent a bit more than you expected to at the library's last book sale?  (Not that I ever do that.)  Charlotte has you covered!

"if it is needful to exercise economy, let go of everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life." (p. 279)

Next time an over-big box of books arrives in the mail, I'm just going to call it living out a Charlotte Mason education! ;)

{From My Commonplace}

Some thoughts on habit training today from Miss Mason...

"Knowing that ... conduct and character alike are the outcome of the habits we allow: knowing, too, that an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought, and, hence a new habit of life, we perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with vitalising ideas as to the relations of life, departments of knowledge, subjects of thought: and to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas.

 -- from Parents and Children, p, 255

"We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character."

 -- from Charlotte Mason's Toward a Philosophy of Education, p. 129

~~~

It's very easy to get caught up in training our children in good habits without remembering the end goal: virtue.  Conduct can (usually) be trained by repetition alone, but character requires the inspiration of "informing ideas" that make that conduct worth having.

Now all I need is to post that up somewhere in my home with flashing lights and bells...

{From My Commonplace}

Last term's poet for my Big Kids was Tennyson, and this poem was one of Vincent's memory selections.

I've been reading lately about the Way of the Will in Charlotte Mason's volumes, and this poem keeps coming back to me again and again.  I have always appreciated the distinction Miss Mason draws between strong and weak wills (and her thought that those we call "strong-willed children" actually have very weak wills when the concept of the will is properly understood), and this poem illustrates that distinction nicely.

It also addresses the weakening of the will through repeated sin.  We have been reading Mother Mary Loyola's First Confession during our Morning Basket time and she reminds often how our ability to resist temptation "ever weaker grows thro' acted crime, or seeming-genial venial fault."  Such a good reminder.

And oh, the language.  The images are so beautifully drawn, and the rhyme scheme, alliteration, and diction make this one a joy to read aloud.

The kids and I often quote those first few lines to one another (in a friendly way, of course) when I ask them to do something they don't want to do.  Gianna will call out to me with a smirk as she heads to finish up the dishes, "He suffers but he will not suffer long!" Ha!

Enjoy!

Will by Alfred Lord Tennyson

O well for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:
For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,
Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock,
That, compass'd round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.

But ill for him who, bettering not with time,
Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will,
And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,
Recurring and suggesting still!
He seems as one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,
And o'er a weary sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault,
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.

{From My Commonplace}

"In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me upon just reflection that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us that they are for our use; and that whatever we may heap up indeed to give to others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more.  I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself that it was at first and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body.  I frequently sat down to my meat with thankfulness and admired the hand of God's providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness ... and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet something that He has not given them.  All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have."

 -- from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

{From My Commonplace}

Sharing two selections today from my recent commonplace entries...

First, Charlotte Mason quotes John Stuart Mill's words on patriotism in Volume 6, and it has had me thinking about how we present heroes to our children:

"Of course there is a great deal to criticise in any country, and I should be the last person to suggest that the critical faculty should not be exercised and trained at school. But before we teach children to criticise the institutions of their country, before we teach them to be critical of what is bad, let us teach them to recognize and admire what is good. After all life is very short; we all of us have only one life to live, and during that life let us get into ourselves as much love, as much admiration, as much elevating pleasure as we can, and if we view education merely as discipline in critical bitterness, then we shall lose all the sweets of life and we shall make ourselves unnecessarily miserable. There is quite enough sorrow and hardship in this world as it is without introducing it prematurely to young people."

-- John Stuart Mill quoted in Charlotte Mason's A Philosophy of Education, p. 126

And this next quote from Volume 3 made me feel oh so much better about my boisterous, "rough-and-tumble" household!

"...it is questionable whether the conception of children as cherished plants in a cultured garden has not in it an element of weakness. Are the children too carefully tended? Is Nature too sedulously assisted? Is the environment too perfectly tempered? Is it conceivable that the rough-and-tumble of a nursery should lend itself more to the dignity and self-dependence of the person and to the evolution of individual character, than that delightful place, a child-garden? I suppose we have all noticed that children show more keen intelligence and more independent thought in home-play and home-talk than one expects of the angelic little beings one sees at school."

-- from Charlotte Mason's School Education, p. 56-7