Wednesdays with Words :: Rossetti in Lent

My children are reading Christina Rossetti's poems this term, and in addition to childhood favorites from Sing-Song, I'm pulling some of her sonnets and other longer poems to read with them.  She has many with religious themes particularly fitting for Lent--I'll be sharing some of those here during Holy Week.  We have also made some wonderful connections between these devotional poems and the religion reading we have been doing this term, focusing on the life of Christ and his apostles.  One such poem we have appreciated both for its Lenten theme and its connection to our studies is the following, published originally in Verses.

"Cried Out With Tears" by Christina Rossetti

Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief:

Lord, I repent, help mine impenitence:

Hide not Thy Face from me, nor spurn me hence,

Nor utterly despite me in my grief;

Nor say me nay, who worship with the thief

Bemoaning my so long lost innocence: --

Ah me! my penitence a fresh offence,

Too tardy and too tepid and too brief.

Lord, must I perish, I who look to Thee?

Look Thou upon me, bid me live, not die;

Say "Come," say not "Depart," tho' Thou art just:

Yea, Lord, be mindful how out of the dust

I look to Thee while Thou dost look on me,

Thou Face to face with me and Eye to eye.

Wednesdays with Words :: Gentle and Patient

Taking inspiration in my parenting from Mother Mary Loyola's First Communion this week:

Our Lord's training of the Twelve was very gentle and patient.  We might have thought rebukes would have been incessant, so that it would be hard to live in His company. But it was not so. He bore with them, and though He reproved them, they were at their ease with Him.  They felt He reproved them because He loved them.  And His reproofs were sweetened by a Divine compassion and a wonderful patience.  He was among them as one of themselves.

Those who have lived with Saints have been afraid to appear before them with sin on their souls, because God has often shown to His Saints the secrets of hearts.  But our Lord's Apostles were not afraid of Him.  Though they knew he could read their hearts, they were not uncomfortable in His Presence.  They knew Him and loved Him as the best of Masters and the truest of Friends.  After three years in His School, hearing His instructions, living in His company, seeing His example, they were far from perfect.  Yet He did not lose patience with them.  He forgave them again and again, helped them in their efforts to do better and encouraged them to try and try again when they failed. 

And see how they repaid His teaching.  Except that poor Judas, for whom He could do nothing, who would not be taught or helped, all the rest came in the end to be what He wanted them to be, and one and all laid down their lives for Him at last. (174, emphasis mine)

The teaching style of Our Lord that Mother Loyola describes here sounds so similar to Charlotte Mason's suggestions on habit training with young children in Volume 1.  I'll share a small bit of her famous "shutting the door" example:

But the little fellow has really not much power to recollect, and the mother will have to adopt various little devices to remind him; but of two things she will be careful––that he never slips off without shutting the door, and that she never lets the matter be a cause of friction between herself and the child, taking the line of his friendly ally to help him against that bad memory of his. 

Habit training as a "friendly ally," "without friction," yet without letting one bad habit slip by.  Providing correction "sweetened by a Divine compassion and a wonderful patience" while still making children feel they can be "at their ease."  Sounds like just the kind of atmosphere I want to cultivate for habit training in our home.

Wednesdays with Words :: A Natural History Club

I have been reading through Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page slowly, thinking over her suggestions there and the wonderful snippets from the PNEU, the HEO, and Charlotte Mason herself in regards to the various notebooks Miss Mason recommended her students (and teachers) keep.  At one point, she provides the following quote from an article published in The Parents' Review called "Observation and Acquaintance with Nature," which in turn quotes a pamphlet from one of the PNEU's Natural History clubs:

The Union possesses a natural history club, from which each branch can receive pamphlets and books treating on nature lore and natural history.  Some branches have their own natural history clubs, the work of which has proved very satisfactory.  The club arranges rambles and exursions for its members on a systematic plan.  It edits a journal called The Children's Quarterly. 

Every year, in May, during the annual conference, there is an exhibition of the works made by young members of the club, which consist in collections of dried plants, drawings of flowers, plants and insects, which are often accompanied by personal descriptions, remarks and observations of the young explorer.  Furthermore, it guides amateurs in giving Nature lessons, and recommends suitable text-books bearing on each section of natural history that is being taken up.  Let me read to you, from one of the Natural History Club pamphlets, some suggestions for children's work, Spring, 1899. 

For Members over ten years--
"No. 1--Make a list of the flowers in your garden, and another of the flowers you see in the hedges."
"No. 2--Watch the leaf buds as they open from day to day, and make notes of anything that strikes you in their various methods of opening."
"No. 3--Make a list of the dates when the fruit trees blossom."
"No. 4--Chryalises collected in autumn should be placed in dry moss in suitable breeding cages.  Drawings should be made of them, and notes taken of their colour, structure, etc.  Draw and describe the butterflies and moths that emerge."
For the children under ten the "suggestion" is:--
"Make sketches of six different kinds of spring flowers, and tell where you found the flower and when.  Don't forget the leaves." (quoted in Bestvater, page 24-5)

This is not your traditional inspiring-quote fare, but ever since I read this passage last week, I have quite inspired.  The way the club is described here shows careful direction on the part of the parents involved while still requiring real, intellectual work on the part of the children.  It's a delicate balance.  And  I love how, as Bestvater points out, the whole project belies "intentional practices that go far beyond simply providing students a notebook and some paints." (25)  These are the times I do wish I had a local community of like-minded families with which to put such a thought into practice.

Wednesdays with Words :: The Hidden Life

More words from Mother Mary Loyola's First Communion this morning:

Oh, is not the Hidden Life wonderful; in one sense the most wonderful part of the Three-and-Thirty Years!  The Infancy is wonderful; the Passion is wonderful.  But there were miracles in Bethlehem and miracles on Calvary.  There were angels singing "Glory Be to God" when He was born; there were shepherds coming to adore Him, and holy Simeon and Anna, and the Magi from the East.  And at His Death the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent, and the earth quaked and  the dead arose.  His own world spoke for Him and proclaimed Him to be its Creator.  But what was there at Nazareth?  There He was the Hidden God indeed, and that for Thirty Years. (156)

I'm sharing from this book again because I found this week's chapter, "Nazareth Again," so very inspiring.  These sections on Nazareth are meant to strengthen our resolve as we go about our own ordinary, hidden daily lives, and for that reason, they have been particularly relevant to my own vocation as a stay-at-home mother.  For example, shortly before this, she makes the point that we know only two things surely of the Young Jesus' life at Nazareth after the Finding in the Temple: that he was "subject to them" and that he "advanced in wisdom and grace and age with God and man."  From this, and considering that his "ordinary" years were given to us as an example rather than as an efficacious miracle in themselves, we can learn from them what should be the two prime motives of our own hidden lives: willing submission in humility and the constant work toward spiritual growth.  And on she goes.  If I could only put into practice the lessons from His days at Nazareth, what kind of blessing could I be to my home?

So much to think about here, and these chapters have come at the perfect time, as I start to consider how Lent will look this year in our own little domestic church--it's just a month away!

Wednesdays with Words :: "And Is Subject to Them"

As I have mentioned before, we're reading Mother Mary Loyola's First Communion this year for our religion studies, and I continue to be impressed by its scope and depth.  Right now we're working through a section on the life of Our Lord, and we were all struck by this passage from her chapter on Nazareth:

We must not leave dear Nazareth till we have looked at the synagogue, where the Holy Family prayed so often, and the site of which is still shown to pilgrims.  The Holy Family went there on the Sabbath-day for public prayer, to hear the Law read and the Prophets.  Think of what passed in the Sacred Heart as Our Lord sat there.  Look at His upturned face as He follows the reader through type and prophesy--seeing clearly in Melchisedech, the Paschal Lamb, the Manna in the Desert, figures of Himself.  How the thought of the Bloody and Unbloody Sacrifice to come, of the Tabernacle and of First Communions is filling that dear Heart of His and making It beat fast with loving impatience.  He hears the glorious names the  Prophets give to the Messiah--the glorious things they say of Him.  He is the King of Glory, the Light of the Gentiles, Christ the Prince, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful, the Mighty God, the Father of the world to come.  He is to redeem with a plentiful Redemption, to rise triumphantly from the dead, to take His seat at the right hand of the Father and to rule over an everlasting Kingdom.  He listens.  He understands.  And when the book is closed and the congregation disperses, He puts His hand again into St. Joseph's and rejoins His Mother and goes down the village street with them again to His poor Home--"And is subject to them."  And all this for me. (124-5)

These chapters on Jesus' early life have made me consider in a new way the many hidden moments in the life of the Holy Family.  I'm so appreciating this opportunity to explore these rich meditations with the children.

Wednesdays with Words :: Esolen on Nature Study

Taking a break from the holiday posting to share some really lovely words on nature study from Anthony Esolen's Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.  This book has been on my bedside table for six months, and I dip into it section by section between other readings--not because it can't sustain my attention, but because it's rich and funny and just the kind of book I like to savor rather than devour.  I was struck again recently by his thoughts on time outdoors, so I flipped back to them again last night and want to quote a longish bit here.  (And look, a double-whammy: Hopkins and Esolen in one!)

But it is not only the floods, and earthquakes, and electric storms that make natures strange to us.  It is all wondrous and strange.  When Elijah sought the Lord, he was not in the tempest, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in 'a still, small voice,' that made the prophet hide his eyes in reverence.  The poet Hopkins saw it his special calling to see what he called the 'inscape' in things, what makes them particularly what they are.  We might think an ordinary flower just that; but to the mind made attentive to the works of nature, the most ordinary things are steeped in their own peculiar ways of being, and are mysterious.  Here we find Hopkins describing bluebells:

'The bluebells in your hand baffle you with their inscape, made to every sense: if you draw your fingers through them, they are lodged and struggle with a shock of wet heads; the long stalks rub and click and flatten to a fan on one another like your fingers themselves would when you passed the palms hard across one another, making a brittle rub and jostle like the noise of a hurdle strained by  leaning against; then there is the faint honey small and in the mouth the sweet gum when you bite them.  But this is easy, it is the eye they baffle.'

Not everyone is a poet, yet children come uneasily near to it in their natural fascination with anything at all.  A child might take a stick to poke around a large mound of red ants, thousands and thousands of them, scurrying about their formicative business, without benefit of schooling, crawling up your shoes and socks if you step too near, to nip your ankles.
...

One way to neutralize this fascination with the natural world is to cordon it off in parks and zoos, and then to act as if only the parks and zoos were worth seeing.  Persuade a child that a giraffe he sees once every couple of years is really impressive, but the wren on the fence post is only a drab little bird--though he warbles out a love song in the morning, cocking his stubby tail, and is in general one of the bravest and most cheerful of birds.  Persuade the child that the Grand Canyon is worth seeing, or Yellowstone Park, or Mount Rushmore, or the breakers of the ocean on the Florida coast.  But ignore the variations of hill and valley, river and pond, bare rock and rich bottom soil, in your own neighborhood.  Children should be encouraged to think they have 'done' rivers, or bird sanctuaries, or botanical gardens, in the way that weary tourists are proud to have done Belgium. (37-8)

(In case you're not familiar with this book, that's a bit of sarcasm shining through there at the end.)  

If those words doesn't make you bound and determined to include at least a weekly trek through the outdoors with your littles, then I'm afraid nothing else will.  Spread a feast of even the "ordinary," and over time, that natural fascination will work its magic.

Wednesdays with Words

We are so enjoying Mother Mary Loyola's First Communion this year.  My two oldest actually made their First Holy Communion last spring, but this book is such a gem that I couldn't resist scheduling it anyway this year.  And I'm glad I did, because I think I'm getting even more out of it than they are!  A peek from this past week's reading:

"It was cold and comfortless in the stable that first Christmas night.  But the Infant Jesus lay patiently in His manger, for He knew that Francis of Assisi would be coming by-and-bye to make His meditation beside Him, and that kneeling there on the straw, he would so burn with love for 'the little Babe of Bethlehem,' as to become a very seraph on earth.

"It was sad to see the rich young man whom He loved go away sorrowful when he first heard the words, 'If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, ... and come, follow Me.'  But Jesus thought of the day when Antony, young and rich, would hear those words read in the Gospel at Mass, and taking them to himself, would make himself poor for his Master's sake--and the Sacred Heart was comforted.

"Yet Francis was never at Bethlehem.  It was in heart and desire only that he knelt by the manger, and saw the Babe, and learned his lesson.  And Antony heard only what we hear again and again.  How it it then that our Lord's words and example sink so deeply into some hearts, whilst they make no impression on others?  Only because some prepare their hearts.  They look lovingly, they listen eagerly, as He says to them, 'Learn of Me," and so they see and hear what others do not, because God shows Himself to them, and speaks to them Himself." (p. 82)

Mother Loyola has a gift for presenting spiritually-packed topics with sensitivity and charm.  The next chapter is titled "Bethlehem"--perfect timing for our heading into Advent in the next couple weeks!