On Endurance, Stamina, and Zeal

"Perhaps in a small parish, he was spared the passion, but didn't feel spared the challenge.  He was feeling more surely than ever that he was exactly where God wanted him to be.  All he really needed, he knew, was the endurance to be there with stamina and zeal."

~ Reflections of Father Tim in At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon

 

"Let us mark this well.  There is nothing which shows our ignorance so much as our impatience under trouble.  We forget that every cross is a message from God, and intended to do us good in the end.  Trials are intended to make us think – to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees."

~Thoughts from JC Ryle on Matthew 15 from his Commentary on the Gospels

 

I read both of these thoughts in the wee hours this morning, and they really struck me.  There are days that full-time mothering and homeschooling in a challenging cross-cultural environment feels like one long hard slog – an ongoing trial that just won't go away.  I will admit that I struggle at times with just wanting an out – any out – from our current situation.  But these thoughts reminded me of some important truths:

 

What I really need is 'endurance, stamina, and zeal' right where I am rather than a way out.  I need more of Him, not an easier life.

 

That leads right into the thought from Ryle: I am ignorant if I am impatient with my trials because those trials are intended for the very purpose of sending me to Him.

 

Oh Lord, help me not to be impatient for this season to end or impatient with the lack of glamour in my job.  Help me to lean harder on You, and continue in what you have called me to do in this season of my life with zeal and stamina.

Why We are Ditching the Science Textbook this Year

I have a confession to make.

 

Last year, my oldest daughter's "second grade" year, we used a science textbook.   I know, that's very un-Charlotte-Mason of me.   Don't get me wrong.  We did nature study too – one of our best years of nature study yet.   We read the living books suggested on the Ambleside Online reading lists.   And we took the text slowly so as not to crowd out these other good things in our schedule.  But the bottom line is that I gave into that fear that somehow nature study and living books wasn't enough.   I gave into that fear that told me I needed a textbook written by an expert and experiments too.

 

This is a pretty common fear among homeschoolers, I think.   It's a pretty frequent topic of discussion over at the Forum, and especially in recent weeks as the first stage of the new 'living science' suggestions for the upper years of the Ambleside curriculum have been rolled out.   (Check out the new suggestions in Year 6 and Year 7.)   Over and over again, the patient 'science ladies' have explained what CM's goals are for science: To love it.  To learn to observe and think.  To care.   Can a textbook help us to reach that goal?   It's a good question to ask.   Silvia shares Kathy's thoughts on that question here.   It's worth the time to click over and read.

 

All this talk on the forum lately got me thinking that maybe I didn't need that science text after all.  But then again, we hadn't finished it yet.  (I hate not finishing what I start.)  And Michelle thought the experiments were a lot of fun.   So why not just keep on sneaking it in there?

 

Around that same time that all this talk was going around the forum, I realized that it's not just a Charlotte Mason thing to say that nature study is enough.  In talks I've listened to recently from the classical world, Andrew Kern and Christopher Perrin have both said that they believe that nature study is not only ENOUGH for science in the elementary grades, but is really an essential foundation for any later upper-level work in the sciences.  Nature study builds that foundation of wonder and keen observation skills.    Can a textbook do that?   I started wrestling with myself again.  Could I really shelve that textbook?  

 

Finally came end-of-term exam time.   I asked Michelle to explain one of the science experiments she had done and what she had learned from it.  And do you know what I realized?  She hadn't really learned anything from it.  Sure, she had fun.  Sure, she could tell me what we did and how it was kind of cool.  But the concept that the experiment was supposed to teach her?  Gone.   On the other hand, she told me in lively and enthusiastic detail about the life cycle of the mango tree we've been keeping an eye on in the yard.  Not only did she do this at exam time, but she did it again during prayer time when she thanked God for making the tree to blossom and produce fruit over and over and over again.  She told me in detail about the habits of our mice, and can correctly identify just about every flowering plant in our neighborhood.  She has taken a fascination with rocks and the interesting bits that can be found amongst 'ordinary' gravel.  I can scarcely keep up with her questions.

 

All of a sudden it hit me: the time we spent with that textbook last year?  It was pretty useless.   She didn't really even learn any nifty facts, let alone gain a greater sense of awe or wonder.   She had fun doing the experiments, but she didn't love what she was learning.   But she loves that tree.  She loves the mice, the flowers, the rocks.   She has a relationship with those things, and she's starting to see the glory of the God who is behind it all.   This is what nature study does that a text just can't.

 

So I got brave.   I went ahead and shelved the textbook.   We'll use the time we might have spent with the text delving more deeply into nature study next year.

 

I'm pretty sure that it will be time well spent.

 

 

Masterly Inactivity: On Knowing When to Let Go

Thoughts on School Education: Chapter 4 "Some Rights of Children as Persons"

 

In this chapter, Charlotte lays out some specific examples of ways that we can respect the personhood of our children and practice masterly inactivity.  Some of those ideas included:

 

• Giving them freedom in play rather than over-stuffing their schedules with organized games and activities.
• Giving them the opportunities to express themselves freely rather than micromanaging.  Specific examples suggested were the freedom to explore creatively and come up with their own ideas and designs when doing art and craft projects rather than expecting a set outcome and freedom to write about topics of interest.  It occurred to me that the use of the 'blank page' in a notebook (as described in The Living Page) as a tool of response to a lesson rather than a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet was one way that this particular suggestion could be applied.  Nelleke shares another example here of giving her son freedom to explore as he has begun learning how to play the piano.
• Giving children the opportunity to "stand or fall by their own efforts" – experiencing for themselves the natural rewards or consequences of their actions, rather than nagging or bribing them to correct behavior.
• Giving children the freedom to choose their own friends.
• Giving children the freedom to spend their pocket money as they choose.
• Allowing children to form their own opinions on things like politics and religion as they grow into adults rather than expecting or influencing them to adopt the exact same position that we hold.

 

Cindy also has a good summary of this chapter here. 

 

I think it's important to note here that one needs to take these suggestions within the whole context of Charlotte's ideas. (And, as Cindy points out in her post, one needs to consider age-appropriateness with these suggestions too.)  Masterly Inactivity doesn't mean a totally 'hands off' approach. It does mean understanding and applying our God-given authority rightly.  It means understanding that our role as parents and teachers is to set before our children the great feast of ideas and to diligently train them in good habits.  It is only within this framework that we will be able to have the freedom not to give into the temptation to micromanage.  The key principle that I took away from the examples Charlotte writes of in this chapter was the idea that our role as parents is to instill our children with right ideas, sound principles, and good habits and then LET GO and not try to micromanage every aspect of their lives, even if that sometimes means letting them learn certain lessons 'the hard way'.   Easier said than done!  Once  again, I find it comes back down to the idea of resting in the Lord and entrusting our children to Him.  It goes back to remembering that we don't have the power to save our children or make them wise in our own power and strength – only God can do that.   We sow the seeds and let the Lord take care of bringing forth the harvest in their lives in His good time.   This has been such a repeated message to me lately!  It has certainly brought home to me the absolute necessity of praying regularly and fervently for my children and for the Lord to work in their lives.  (Lisa has a beautiful, must-read post on this topic here.)

Fruits and Flowers: May/June Nature Notes

I thought I'd I share something a little more pleasant after last time's creepy crawlies. J

 

A month or so ago, Dan and the kids came inside bearing a new kind of fruit that I had never seen before: a rose apple.

 

 

These were a new-to-us discovery in a neighbor's yard.  There were heaps of them ripe on the tree at the time and there were children climbing the tree and passing them down.  They are lovely fruits – our plant guide indicated that they can be used to make jam, and I bet it would make lovely jam.  We only had two so I sliced them and put them into a tossed salad with a balsamic vinaigrette, which was lovely as well.  They are spicy-sweet with a texture similar to a pear.

 

Later I went to inspect the tree from whence they came, and found out that the flowers are rather magnificent too.

 

 

I also recently learned from a different neighbor that the vine we are growing along our fence is a passion fruit vine.  When I was taking my laundry out one morning a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that there were buds all along the vine which I hadn't noticed before.

 

 

 

I also noticed an immature passion fruit, which puzzled me because I had never seen any opened flowers, just buds.  How can you have fruit without any flowers?

 

 

It wasn't until a week or two later that I finally noticed a passion flower blooming on our vine.  Aren't they magnificent?

 

 

They seem to be very short blooming flowers.  I noticed this one late in the afternoon on one day, and by the morning it was shut up tight again.  I never saw that same one open again, although I have noticed a couple of others open on the vine at other times – always very briefly.  That would explain why we saw the fruits before the flowers – the flowers are fleeting, but so very beautiful if you do happen to catch a glance.

 

Family Reading #15

A peek at what we've been reading at our house lately:

 

 

With the Littles

This week there's been a lot of Brambly Hedge and Virgina Lee Burton (Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, The Little House, etc.)  We're also working out way through The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book,  a collection of folktales from around the world.

 

Michelle's Reading (Age 8.5)

Well, she's been doing a lot of binge reading of Beverly Cleary books (especially the Henry Huggins series), the Boxcar Children, and Lucy Fitch Perkins Twins series (this week was The Belgian Twins and The Spartan Twins).  She has also read Baby Island, and just pulled out The Adventures of Dr Doolittle.   She's actually made some really fun connections with some of these books too.  It's fun when your child comes running to you while reading The Spartan Twins and says "Mom!  Did you know that there are things from The Wonder Book in here?  It's the Gorgon's head with the snaky locks and everything!"  Or wondering at the dinner table if Dr Doolitte might go to the Sahara Desert while he's in Africa – in Timbuktu, no less – on the very same day that you happened to read the chapter from The Child's History of the World about the great medieval kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai for school.  Charlotte Mason tells us that education is the science of relations, and it is so very exciting to see that happening.

 

James' Reading (Age 6)

We are buddy-reading Thorton Burgess' The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse.  On his own he's reading a variety of Level 3 and Level 4 easy readers we got from our co-op library and the Billy and Blaze series.

 

Featured School Book

Okay, so this isn't the most literary choice, perhaps. J  But my map-loving children are adoring the new Oxford Atlas of the World that I splurged and bought.  It's huge.  But it's finally satisfying our need for details that the more compact atlases we have just don't.  I've always loved a good atlas.  So does my hubby.  And our kids are following suit. 

 

Bedtime Reading

We just finished Because of Winn Dixie which was enjoyed by all.  Our next choice is The Door in the Wall.  I had to stop in the middle of the first chapter because it was a longish chapter and it was getting late and Michelle was rather peeved at me for not continuing.  That's usually a pretty good sign….

 

Devotionally, we are enjoying Catherine Vos' A Child's Story Bible on weeknights.  We read through this story Bible when Michelle was four (and the other two were just babies), but even I am getting much out of re-reading it.  Catherine Vos is a really good storyteller.  Our current Sunday reading is the devotional book Exploring Grace Together, which has been thought provoking for the two older children especially and Pilipinto's Happiness which was written by Elisabeth Elliot's daughter Valerie about her experiences going back to live among the Waorani (Auca) people who killed her father.  We just finished an account of the martyrdom of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and the other missionaries in 1956 (The Fate of the Yellow Woodbee), so this is a fitting follow-up.

 

On Mama's Nightstand

In my morning devotional time I am working my way through the book of Matthew with a devotional commentary by JC Ryle and Kathleen Nielson's book Bible Study.

 

In my afternoon "study time", I am rotating through How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook, How to Read a Book, School Education (Charlotte Mason's third volume), and When Athens Met Jerusalem.  I was previously trying to read through all of Ambleside Online Year 4 too, but it proved to be more than I could enjoyably keep up with so I scaled back to a few selections that were of the greatest interest to me.  Right now that's Madam How and Lady Why, Kidnapped, Emily Dickinson's poetry, and Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution.  I'm also reading Churchill's Birth of Britain which is the Year 7 history spine, but corresponds to the time period that I am studying with Michelle in Year 2 and fleshes out the details a bit more.   My study time tends to be the 45 minutes or so at the end of the afternoon when I stop to have a cup of coffee before I need to start supper – usually I sit out on the porch because the kids are playing outside.  I will read a chapter (or section or two out of those books with longer subdivided chapters) out of two or three different books and just keep rotating through them, with a little more focused reading time on the weekends.  It's slow going, but it's better than nothing, and truly is enriching and invigorating to be learning along with my kids. 

 

 

In the evening I am reading my long-awaited copy of The Story of Charlotte Mason (this is out of print and hard to find at a reasonable cost, but I was able to snag a copy thanks to a tip from one of the lovely forum ladies).  I am enjoying it very much.  I am also still slowly working my way through The Lord of the Rings alongside my husband, too. 

 

And when I am just completely FLAT OUT…then I re-read bits from Jan Karon's Mitford series.  I love those books.  Happy sigh. J

 

Been reading anything good at your house lately?

Masterly Inactivity: How Can We Live It?

Thoughts on School Education: Chapter 3 "Masterly Inactivity" – Part 2

 

Last week, we defined what is meant by Charlotte Mason's term "masterly inactivity".  Today let's talk about how  we can reach this serenity of attitude – this 'state of rest' as Andrew Kern would put it – so that we can practice Masterly Inactivity in our homes.  Charlotte offers a few suggestions towards this end:

 

First of all, Charlotte encourages mothers to 'play' from time to time: "If mothers would learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households.  Let the mother go out to play!  If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes to tense, and just take a day, or half-a-day, but in the fields, or with a favorite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed without the children life would go on far more happily for both children and parents" (p.33-34).

I know, it does sound like a bit of a pipe dream, doesn't it?  In my particular life situation, I don't have a lot of opportunities to get out and away from my children, and yet I do see the difference that it makes when I can.  My ideal is to take a half a day at a coffee shop to read and think and journal, or to take a long walk in some peaceful place – but I can't do either of those in our current city.  What I have been able to manage is daily quiet rest time – in which we all go into our separate spaces and relax with a book or take a nap, mama included.  I also stop whatever tasks I am doing in the late afternoon early enough to be able to take 45 minutes or so with a cup of coffee and a book that nourishes my soul and mind before I need to start dinner.  My children are often playing outside at this time of day, weather permitting, so I join them with a chair on the front porch. Occasionally my husband will take the children out or find projects that he can include them in on the weekends so that I can have some quiet time alone at the house to read or write.  We are sadly lacking in places where one can take long peaceful walks in our city, but we soak that kind of thing up when we are able to get out of town for a while.  An occasional ladies' night out can be refreshing too, although in a different way.  What can you do to get some occasional refreshment for yourself?  It's worth a think, even if it means thinking outside the box.

 

Charlotte also encourages us to try and have a 'state of leisure' in our homes as far as possible.  The ideal is to try and avoid being rushed, busy, and stressed.  Busy seasons lead to greater 'fractiousness' in the home.  "Leisure for themselves and a sense of leisure in those about them is as necessary to a child's well-being as it is to the strong and benign parental well-being" (p.35).

 

This is a tough one in today's world, isn't it?  There's almost a societal expectation that we make ourselves busy, with the accompanying guilt trip  if we're not.   I will confess that I probably have an easier time of keeping our day-to-day schedule leisurely simply because I live in Africa and don't have the myriad of activity choices that are available elsewhere.   We still have busy seasons, though, especially around conference and co-op sessions…and I do notice the increased "fractiousness" in our home during those times.  It always makes me glad these are temporary seasons in our family life and not our normal state of life!  It is worthwhile to consider all the activities that we are involved in and all the running around we do.  Is it possible to combine our errands into fewer trips?  Can we evaluate the true value of our activities and cut some of them out?   Cindy Rollins has some words of  wisdom on this subject matter here. "Stress," she reminds us, "is the enemy of just about everything worthwhile."

 

Ultimately, though, and perhaps most importantly of all, Charlotte reminds us that masterly inactivity is the outworking of our faith in God and our rest in Him: "The highest form of confidence, known to us as faith, is necessary to full repose of mind and manner.  When we recognize that God does not make over the bringing up of children absolutely even up to their parents, but that He works Himself, in ways which it must be our care not to hinder, in the training of every child, then we shall learn passiveness, humble and wise.  We shall give children space to develop on the lines of their own characters in all the right ways, and shall know how to intervene effectually to prevent those errors which, also, are proper to their individual characters" (p.35).

 

Masterly inactivity is really all about REST – teaching and parenting and living from a state of rest, trusting that God will lead and guide us – when to act, when to let things go - and trusting our children are ultimately in His care.  Our role is to plant the seeds, He brings forth the fruit.

 

The message of masterly inactivity dovetails so nicely with my contemplations on rest over the past month or two.  I highly recommend Sarah's new ebook and audio companion Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakeable Peace if you need some practical encouragement in this regard.  At the very least, you can listen to interview she did with Andrew Kern as part of the audio companion for free at the Circe Institute website. 

 

In what practical ways have you striven to live out the principle of masterly inactivity in your living, parenting, and teaching?

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Commonplace: On Achilles, and How Jesus Changes Everything

Most of you already know that I participated in a group discussion on The Iliad over on the AO Forum last spring.  We wrapped up that book back in May, but I've found myself still chewing on it all these weeks later.  The central character in The Iliad is Achilles, considered the quintessential Greek hero.  But most of us in the book discussion group had a hard time understanding why he was upheld as such a paragon.  To us he appeared to be a selfish, brooding tyrant.  What was so wonderful about him?  What did the Greeks see in him that we as modern Christian women were just not seeing?  Was it a cultural difference?  Religious difference?  Gender difference?  My gut instinct to answer that question was that the difference was because of our belief in the one True God, and perhaps even more specifically because of Christ. Throughout the discussion, many of us noted that we were grateful to serve a God that we could rely on to be Faithful and True in contrast with the capricious nature of the Greek gods and goddesses that were 'running the show' behind the scenes in The Iliad.
 

Shortly after finishing our Iliad study, I picked up John Mark Reynolds' When Athens Met Jerusalem and have been very slowly working my way through that.  With these thoughts about the contrasting natures of our God and the Greek pantheon in the back of my mind, I found Reynolds' comments about Homer very interesting:

"Homer taught human beings to fear the gods - not in the Judeo-Christian sense of awe and love, but in terms of terror. His great study of the Trojan War, The Iliad, begins in war and ends there. His is a hard view of reality, skeptical about progress from humans who are born into pointless struggle with gods and nature, a torment that does not even end in death….Homer, the greatest Greek poet and mythmaker, pictured gods who used humans as playthings in the famous Trojan War. The war began with a petty quarrel between the gods to determine which of the female deities was the fairest, and it grew to swallow up human heroes. The irrationality of the war was matched by the futility of human existence itself. Mortal man was doomed to die. Unlike the beasts, humans were aware of their own immortality, but strive as they might, they could not overcome it. Humans could not escape their fate no matter how powerful their passions. The first word of Homer's Iliad, the magnificent poem about the Trojan War, can be translated 'divine wrath'. The Greek hero Achilles possesses this godlike passion and was the ideal warrior. His anger, so potent it condemns hundreds of Greeks to death, does nothing but destroy everything he loves. He is man with only one weakness, the famous Achilles' heel, but that is enough. He falls. He is merely a man."

~John Mark Reynolds, When Athens Met Jerusalem

 

Isn't that fascinating? The world that Homer pictures is a world of chaos, hopelessness and futility, no matter how hard one may strive. Achilles was the great hero in that world because he reflected the 'godlike passions' that acted according to whim and used those around him as pawns. We find that repulsive because in Christianity, we have an orderly world ruled over by an unchanging, Sovereign God. We have a 'future and a hope'. And the model we set before us as an ideal is Jesus Christ Himself who 'did not consider equality with God to be grasped' but humbled Himself to death on the cross in the place of sinners.  

 

God sending His Son into the world to save sinners – this changes everything.