An Advent Reflection

This year's Advent season has been kind of different – unique – mostly in a good way.

 

Part of it is borne out of the fact that I decided to wait for most of the 'celebratory' aspects of Christmas – the decorating, the baking, the gift wrapping, the music, the guests -  until…well…Christmas. We are all off of work and school that week between Christmas and New Years and will actually have time to savor and enjoy those activities.   I find that now I'm actually looking forward it rather than dreading one (or two, or three, or four) more thing to cram in around my husband's busy work schedule, the kids' swimming lessons, and moving house (which is how we spent the first three weeks of December).

 

Part of it has been seeing the kids embrace our Advent devotional traditions as their own.  They asked for weeks ahead of time if we were going to listen to the Messiah again this year.  They are active participators in our nightly Jesse Tree readings.  They listen.  They ask questions.  All those years of trying to establish these traditions when they were all little and it seemed to be a waste of time because they were too wiggly and squirmy to get anything out of it?  That's totally paying off now that they are a little bit older.

 

Part of it has been that I have been taking the time to do my own personal reflections on Advent, using the devotional guide portion of Bobby Gross' book Living the Christian Year, meditations that have seamlessly tied together with my regular through-the-New-Testament readings, my personal literary reading, and what we've been reading with the children.  Those twin themes of Advent - waiting and patience -have been particularly meaningful to me this year.  This has been true both on a personal level in my daily battle against discouragement and on a grander level when one starts to think about all the hard, hard things going on all over the world – those things that sometimes make you start to wonder at times if God is still there.

 

Consider this from Isaiah 35:3-4, 10:

 

"Encourage the exhausted and strengthen the feeble.  Say to those with anxious heart, 'Take courage, fear not.  Behold your God will come with vengeance; the recompense of God will come, But He will save you…The ransomed of the Lord will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads.  They will find gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing with flee away." (NASB)

 

On the same day that I read that in the Advent devotional, my regularly-scheduled Bible reading was from 2 Peter 2.  The very same theme was echoed – waiting and hoping for the Savior who will mete out vengeance on the unrighteous and salvation to those who belong to Him.  The day is coming when all will be made right.   We've started reading the Narnia books out loud to the children, and even that story has tied right in to my reflections:

 

"Wrong will be right when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,

And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again."

(CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe)

 

The following day, I came to the story of the birth of John the Baptist in my Advent reflections.  The thought occurred to me about how very amazing these events must have been to Zechariah and Elizabeth and those around them after 400 years of "silence" - to see God stirring and working again…to see prophecies being fulfilled, to know that they were not forgotten.  This birth of John the Baptist was like that first thaw of spring after endless winter in Narnia....Aslan was on the move!  The promised Messiah was coming to rescue and to redeem and to save: "Because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." (Luke 1:78-79, NASB).

 

I saw the Advent theme again as I read the final few books of Homer's Odyssey this past weekend.  Penelope, Odysseus' wife, has been waiting for 20 long years for Odysseus to return home from the Trojan War - never knowing if he was dead or alive.  Talk about waiting - longing - hoping - hardly daring to believe that it might be true - and then the joy when she finally recognizes that it is him, alive and well and home again:

 

"Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel when they catch sight of land - Poseidon has struck their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds and crushing walls of  waves, and only a few escape swimming, struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore, their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy as they plant their feet on solid ground again, spared a deadly fate..."

(Homer, trans. Fagles, The Odyssey , Book 23 Lines 262-269

 

 

Waiting and patience…and the joy that comes when that long waiting is over and the thing sought for has come at last. He HAS come to save us, and WILL come again to take us home.  We can have hope in the waiting because we know that the joy will come.  It is sure and it is certain.

 

E'en so Lord Jesus, quickly come!

From My Commonplace: Persons Created in the Image of God

One of the ladies in my Odyssey reading group suggested reading Chesterton's The Everlasting Man together as well.  As if I needed another book discussion to join…

This is my first Chesterton. I have always thought he was one of those authors that I *should* read, but he's always kind of intimidated me so I haven't. I'm finding I'm really glad that she suggested it, however, since I'm really enjoying him so far, and I don't think I would have picked it up otherwise. I find that I am appreciating his humor as well as his deeper insights. To me, he is making some very profound truths sound completely reasonable.

A few quotes that I put into my commonplace book  from Chapter 1 (oh, Chesterton is indeed quotable!)...

"And it will be valuable to our sense of reality to consider quite simply what that real evidence is, and not to go beyond it."

 

In this first chapter, Chesterton is refuting the common caricature of prehistoric cavemen that have been drawn up on little more evidence than a few paintings found in caves. I think maybe this is the crux of his point about the cave men might be? The truth is that the little bits of evidence we do have about ancient times/prehistory DON'T give us the complete story of what life was like in those times. There is much we don't know and can't know, and we would do well to be humble about that and realize that much of what does get passed off as early history is conjecture. He then goes on from there to make his next point: what we CAN know from the ancient cave drawings -

"It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree, and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man."

 

"Art is the signature of man."

 

"This creature was truly different from other creatures; because he was a creator as well as a creature."

 

"Man is the microcosm; man is the measure of all things, man is the image of God."

"The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth."

 

"There may be a broken trail of stone and bone faintly suggesting the development of the human body. There is nothing even faintly suggesting such a development of the human mind."

 

~GK Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

The cave painting tells us that man is unique - he is not just some smart and highly developed animal. And man is unique because he is made in the image of God. Because of that, he has capacities that other creatures don't have - art, as Chesterton says here...theology/thought of God as one of my fellow book discussion ladies pointed out, I think I've heard Andrew Kern mention language in this category too. This is all making me think about how Charlotte Mason says children are born persons - persons reflecting the image of God in in our art, in our worship, in our words.  When you think of it that way, it makes all the difference in how we view them, interact with them, and teach them.  We aren't training them to do tricks, we are helping them to better see and reflect the glory of God to the world around them. (I fleshed this topic out in a little more detail here.)

 

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Family Reading #16

Yes, that would be all three of my children reading while waiting for a wedding to start.  Cameroonian weddings involve all the guests having outfits made from fabric chosen by the bride and groom, in case you are wondering about the matching outfits. :)  They also involve a fair amount of sitting around and waiting for the next thing to happen, so I'm glad I thought to have each of them bring a book.  Apparently this is kind of a strange thing for children to do, though, as I had one person comment that it was so nice to see children reading rather than playing with electronics, and someone else (an adult) comment to my 9 year old that he had never read a book that thick.  Who knew we were so radical?

 

It has been officially far-too-long since I did a reading post.  So, here it goes. J

 

With the Littles (James Age 6 and Elizabeth Age 4.5)

The consistent favorite picture book choices lately have included Shirley Hughes' Alfie books and the Brambly Hedge series by Jill Barklem.  After lunch, I have been reading the two littler ones the Little House on the Prairie series – currently working on Farmer Boy.  (My Big Girl often comes and listens in too – I don't think one can ever get tired of the Little House books.)

 

Michelle's Reading (Age 9)

I can't keep up with this girl's reading anymore.  She's read LOTS.  But a recent favorite was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.  She's read it about 5 times in the last 2 months, and she even prompted me to go read it again since she wanted to talk about it with me and I couldn't remember much more than the very basic outline of the plot from my childhood reading of it. J  She's also been enjoying the Noel Streatfield Shoes books – Ballet Shoes, Theatre Shoes, and Dancing Shoes are the ones that we have.  She is particularly delighted by the references to Shakespeare in these books – thank you AO!

 

James' Reading (Age 6)

We continue to buddy read each day from the Thornton Burgess books – currently just about finished with The Adventures of Johnny Chuck.  He's also enjoyed reading from our Thomas the Tank Engine treasury (these are the original stories, not the based-on-the-cartoon ones).  He dips in and out of lots of other books too…I think I need to start challenging him to read through some chapter books on his own rather than just dipping.

 

Featured School Book

Michelle has about 2 days left to finish Ambleside Online Year 2!  Her favorite book this term has been Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.  While she's enjoyed the adventure aspect of the story, her narrations (oral, drawn, and written) have also paid a great deal of attention to the clothing and fashion of the people concerned, which has made me smile.  It's kind of funny, but at the same time I see her making connections not only with the text and the illustrations in the text, but also ideas that she has gathered about medieval dress and medieval lifestyle from other books.   Making connections? Check.  Really living in the time period?  Check.   (Have I mentioned how much I love AO?!)

 

Bedtime Reading

We just finished Along Came a Dog, a Year 2 free reading choice.  This was a surprise favorite for my crew.  It's a fairly simple story about a little red hen who loses her toes when her feet freeze (so she trots about on her 'knucklebones') and the big, black stray dog that protects her.   I've caught James and Elizabeth pretend-playing that they are the little red hen and the black dog several times in the past few days, and all three children came dashing into the kitchen when I was preparing the Thanksgiving chicken last week to see the feet (whole chickens are always sold with the feet here) so I could show them which part exactly were the knucklebones.  Who'd-a-thunk?

 

Next up is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Their first trip to Narnia.  I'm almost giddy with excitement.  'Nuff said.

 

On Mama's Nightstand

Too much as usual. J  I won't even try to list everything out, although feel free to take a peep at the sidebar if you want the full scoop J.  A lot them are books that I am reading with discussion groups that are winding down for the holidays and will resume in the New Year anyhow.  I do have three that are in process that I'm hoping to finish by the end of the year, namely: The Universe Next Door (a "worldview catalog" – I read this in college for the first time, and was inspired to revisit it by a recent discussion on the nature and importance of worldviews over on the Forum), Introducing Covenant Theology (about the significance of covenants in Scripture, and taking the theme of covenants as an organizing principle for theology – interesting so far), and The Odyssey (which has been far more readable than The Iliad – I'm about ¾ through and can't wait to see how it turns out.)

 

What have you been reading lately?

From my Commonplace: On Integrity

A much needed 'kick in the pants' this morning from a wise mentor:

 

"As a matter of fact, it is easier to do the definite work of school or profession than the easily evaded, indefinite work which belongs to the home daughter [or home mother!]"

 

"We know that an integer is a whole number; and a man of integrity is a whole man, complete and sound.  Like Rome itself, such a man is not built in a day."

 

"The whole worker goes at his job with a will, does it completely and with pleasure, and has more leisure for his own diversions than the poor 'ca'-canny' creature whose jobs never get done."

 

"It is well to make up your mind that there is always a next thing to be done, whether in work or play; and that the next thing, be it ever so trifling, is the right thing; not so much for its own sake, perhaps, as because, each time we insist upon ourselves doing the next thing, we gain power in the management of that unruly filly, Inclination.  But to find 'ye the next thynge' is not after all so simple.  It is often a matter of selection."

 

"What is worth beginning is worth finishing, and what is worth doing is worth doing well."

 

"It is worthwhile to make ourselves go on with the thing we are doing until it is finished.  Even so, there is temptation to scamp in order to get at the new thing; but let us do each bit of work as perfectly as we know how, remembering that each thing we turn out is a bit of ourselves, and we must leave it whole and complete; for this is Integrity."

 

"[Integrity] rests upon the foundations of diligence, attention, and perseverance.  In the end, integrity makes for gaiety, because the person who is honest about his work has time to play, and is not secretly vexed by the remembrance of things left undone or ill done."

 

~ Charlotte Mason, Ourselves, p.167-172

 

 

(Interesting addendum:  I read the chapter from which these quotes are taken Tuesday morning in my quiet time, and typed them up Tuesday afternoon with the intention of sharing them here. Then, Tuesday evening, our Bible Study group discussed Colossians 3:18-4:1.  Verses 22-24 particularly jumped out at me in light of these thoughts: "Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.  Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance.  It is the Lord Christ whom you serve."  Okay, Lord, I'm listening....)

 

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An Afternoon at Deception Pass

I am very fortunate to have relatives who live in Washington State.  I love Washington.   We honeymooned in Washington.  I would live there if I could.  But since God has other plans for our family right now (one can always dream about someday, right?!), having relatives there is the next best thing since it gives us the excuse to visit regularly.  J Michelle and I were there in September for my grandfather's memorial service.  Our time there was way too short, but thankfully we were able to spend an couple of hours one afternoon here, one of my very favorite spots in the world.   We stopped.   We rested.  We breathed.  And our souls were refreshed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Couple of Resources You Should Know About

There have been a couple of new 'must have' resources for Christian Classical and/or Charlotte Mason educators released recently, and just in case you haven't heard about them yet, I wanted to make sure that you know about them. J  

 

 

The first is Karen Glass' new book, Consider This.   Ever wonder about the roots of the Classical Liberal Arts tradition and how Charlotte Mason's approach to education fits in?  This is the book that will put together the pieces of that puzzle for you.  It is well written and incredibly accessible.  I just finished reading through it for a fairly quick 'first pass', but look forward to revisiting it slowly and savoring it when I get a chance.   You can read more about the book at Karen's website, and here is an in-depth review.

 

 

The other is Brandy Vencel's new study guide for Charlotte Mason's 20 principles: Start Here.    Have you ever wanted to dig in to Charlotte Mason's writings, but find it a little intimidating to know where?  This is a great starting place!  Brandy has taken Charlotte Mason's 20 principles and turned them into a study drawing from Charlotte's writings, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's book For the Children's Sake, and insightful posts and articles from all around the web.   In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't actually purchased a copy of this one yet, but I participated in a 20 Principles study that Brandy led last year over on the AO Forum, the same study that this study guide is based upon.  It was a fantastic, eye-opening experience – you can read some of my quotes and thoughts from that study here.   I am so thrilled that Brandy has made this same study available for anyone who wants to use it to dig deeply into what Charlotte Mason education is really all about.

 

Happy Reading, folks!

Guest Post!

Today, I am guest posting over at Expanding Wisdom, sharing my journey from a conventional classroom educator to Christian Classsical homeschooler. J   Feel free to click on over and give it a read.