Wednesday with Words: On Living a Beautiful Life, Starting Today

I was recently inspired by my reading of The Living Page and considerations of Desiring the Kingdom to pick up again The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer.   This is one of my favorite books – one that I have dipped in and out of several times in recent years.  It really is a lovely book that encourages us to bring beauty into our ordinary, to express ourselves creatively and in that way reflect God’s image to the world – and to do it NOW, with the time and talents and resources we have TODAY.   The ‘practices’ she describes are meant to help us imagine and attend and communicate and live in community together.   It struck me that Charlotte Mason would have heartily approved of this book – education is an atmosphere, after all.   (But then perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised to see glimpses of CM here – after all it was Edith’s daughter Susan who gave us For the Children’s Sake which is the book that brought Charlotte Mason’s ideas back to the modern world.)

 

A couple of thoughts I found particularly encouraging:

 

“People so often look with longing into a daydream future, while ignoring the importance of the present.  We are all in danger of thinking ‘someday I shall have the courage to start another life which will develop the talent and express the fact of being a creative creature.’” (p. 33)

 

"There is a place for the conscious sacrifice of the expression of a talent, asking God to show His will for the use of our lives in anyway He plans - rather than insisting that it must be fulfilled in particular ways.  It is a turning from or giving up - with complete trust that God really is love, and all wise, and would not waste the life of any one of His children...Whether in music, or other things, one never knows what surprisingly satisfying things God has in His plan for the developed talent which is literally 'given' to Him to use or to lay aside." (p.42-3)

 

“If the one who cooks is the wife in the family, her attitude toward the marriage as a whole should be able to think of it as a career.  Being challenged by what a difference her cooking and her way of serving is going to make in the family life gives a woman an opportunity to approach this with the feeling of painting a picture or writing a symphony.  To blend together a family group, to help human beings of five, ten, fifteen, and sixty years of age to live in communication with each other and to develop into a ‘family unit’ with constantly growing appreciation of each other and of the ‘unit’ by really working at it, in many different areas, but among others in the area of food preparation is to do that which surely can compare with blending oils in a painting or writing notes for a symphony.  The cook in the home has opportunity to be doing something very real in the area of making good human relationships.” (p.124-5)

 

~Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking

 

I do have dreams of things that I would like to do - dreams that I don't see as possible to be fulfilled in our current life situation.  Sometimes this is discouraging - and discouragement clouds everything.   I am reminded here to let go of those dreams and use my talents and interests and skills to enrich the life that have today, in my present circumstances, rather than dreaming of what may or may not be sometime off in the future.  I am reminded that the "little" things that I can do today are meaningful and can make a difference.  And who knows how He will work?  He has good plans to grow me and shape me and use me.  My task is to be faithful, one step at a time.

 

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DTK Chapter 5, Part 2: The Power of Music

One of the worship practices that Smith describes in this section is song.  I agree with him wholeheartedly  when he describes the power of music to leave an impression on and shape us: “A song gets absorbed into our imagination in a way that mere texts rarely do.  Indeed a song can come back to haunt us almost, catching us off guard or welling up within our memories because of situations or contexts that we find ourselves in, then perhaps spilling over into our mouths till we find ourselves humming a tune or quietly singing.  The song can evoke a time and a place, even the smells and tastes of a moment.”

 

Biola University Chorale Chicago Tour, Spring 2001

 

Have you ever had that experience that he describes?  I do all the time.  Just about anytime I hear a familiar song I immediately associate it with the place where I first heard it.  I have songs that I associate with the year 1996 (the “Macarena” and “Shine Jesus Shine” if you really want to know…), songs that take me back to the summer of 2002 when I had my first new car, songs that will forever be associated with the Ukarumpa Meeting House.   I still occasionally get songs I sang in junior high choir stuck in my head for no apparent reason at all.  Yes: music has a way of staying with us.

 

I think music has an incredible power to bond together those who make it as well.  I sang in choir and did musical theatre for many, many years and had a brief stint as a voice major my first year of college (little known secrets!) – even after changing my major, I continued to sing in our college choir.  99% of the high school and college friends I am still in contact with are people that I sang with.  There’s something about those experiences that bound us together in unique ways.

 

Some of the most powerful worship experiences I have had have been musically related too.  Singing beautiful Christmas music by candlelight in a dim chapel.  Hearing the harmonies of “And Can it Be” sung by a men’s ensemble in an echoing tunnel. Singing excerpts of The Messiah with a full orchestra.  The sung benediction of “God Be in My Head” at the end of every choir concert for 4 years and then again at my college graduation, and then again a few years later at my wedding.   More recently, joining together in a mish-mash of French and English to sing a hymn like “How Great Thou Art” or “To God Be the Glory” with our African brothers and sisters.  A little foretaste of heaven, all of these things.

 

Music does have a tremendous sticking power, and with that comes tremendous shaping power.  Which begs the question: what do we want to stick?   A lot of the music that has stuck with me is good.  I don’t mind it coming to mind at random moments.   But there’s also a fair amount of music in there that I rather wish wasn’t.   The bad sticks just as much as the good.  There is a reason that Paul admonishes us “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything is worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” (Philippians 4:8, NASB)  There is a reason why Edith Schaeffer, in her book The Hidden Art of Homemaking, tells us that “Christian homes should not be places where nothing but a bit of sentimental or romantic music is heard, but places where there is the greatest variety of good music…” (p. 40).  (As an aside, I love how Ambleside encourages this by the inclusion of Hymns, Folk Songs, and Classical Composer studies in the curriculum.)  This is why we pursue Truth, Beauty, and Goodness – these are the things that we want to stick because it is the Good, True, and Beautiful that will direct our hearts towards God and His Kingdom.

 

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Family Reading #13

Some highlights of what we’ve been reading lately….

 

 

With the Littles

In the past week we both received our long-lost sea freight shipment (read: Christmas in March) AND Miss Elizabeth celebrated her fourth birthday.  All of that = a very nice stack of new picture books in our household.   Some of the highlights: Miss Rumphius, The Adventure of Brer Rabbit and Friends, The Story of Little Babaji, and Tikki Tikki Tembo.   (I think we may possibly own all of the books on the AO Year 0 Booklist now.)

 

Michelle’s Reading (Age 8.5)

I asked Michelle what her favorite books she has read for free-reading recently were and she said Happy Times in Noisy Village because it is funny and Ellen Tebbits because it is a good story about girls.  J  (I admit that Ellen Tebbits were always my favorite Beverly Cleary character growing up as well.)

 

James’ Reading (Age 5.5)

We have been enjoying the Henry and Mudge series by Cynthia Rylant.

 

Featured School Book

We are thoroughly enjoying Ambleside Online Year 2.   One book we’ve particularly taken to is Seabird, one of our geography selections.  This story tells of a multi-generational journey around the world alongside a history of various means of navigation.   Michelle likes it best when we are scheduled to read two chapters rather than just one. J   We also enjoy this book because the main character shares a name with one of our family members, and my husband’s family has a history in shipbuilding and sea-faring.  Real-life connections are always fun.

 

Bedtime Reading

We are continuing to enjoy The Five Little Peppers and How they Grew – very sweet story.

 

On Mama’s Nightstand

I finally received my copy of Laurie Bestvater’s The Living Page.  It is every bit as good as everyone says.  J  That pretty much hijacked all of my other reading over the past week or so.   Now that I’ve read the whole thing fairly quickly from cover to cover, I’m looking forward to reading back through it slowly, savoring, taking notes, and considering how to implement its ideas into our homeschool.   Stay tuned – I’m sure I will be sharing more thoughts on it soon.    

 

Gratuitous Bonus: my new custom-designed bookshelf for the school corner. :)

 

What have you been reading lately?

Wednesday with Words: On Fear and Courage

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I have been participating in the AO Forum Book Discussion of The Iliad.   (Can I just take a second to gush about my AO Forum ladies?  I love that we have a group of homeschool moms over there who are willing to take the time to tackle some of these ‘classics’ together so that we can grow and learn together.  The group experience really makes it so much less intimidating and more enjoyable to tackle a book like this.  We’re about halfway done with The Iliad, but discussion has already commenced about what we might read next…so feel free to pop on over and join us for the next one!  Although, be forewarned, we can bit a bit – ahem – silly at times…)

 

Anyhow, The Iliad.   Epic war stories are generally not my thing.   The Iliad is not for the faint at heart, and to be completely honest, I have skimmed over some of the gorier battle scenes.  Nevertheless, I am finding the story itself fascinating.  In each of the characters – in their actions and interactions with each other – you really start to see reflections of human nature, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  And in some of those people you may just see yourself.

 

“That left the famous spearman Odysseus on his own,
not a single Argive comrade standing by his side since panic seized them all.
Unnerved himself, Odysseus probed his own great fighting heart:
'O dear god, what becomes of Odysseus now?
A disgraceful thing if I should break and run, fearing their main force-but it's far worse if I'm taken all alone.
Look, Zeus just drove the rest of my comrades off in panic flight.
But why debate, my friend, why thrash things out?
Cowards, I know would quit the fighting now but the man who wants to make his mark in war must stand his ground and brace for all he's worth - suffer his wounds or wound his man to death.'

Weighing it all, heart and soul, as on they came, waves of Trojan shieldsmen crowding him tighter, closing in on their own sure destruction...
like hounds and lusty hunters closing, ringing a wild boar till out of his thicket lair he crashes, whetting his white tusks sharp in his bent, wrenching jaws and they rush into attack and under the barks and shouts you can hear the gnash of tusks but the men stand firm - terrible, murderous as he is - so the Trojans ringed Odysseus dear to Zeus, rushing him straight on.

But he lunged first..."

~Homer (trans. by Fagles), The Iliad, Book XI

This passage resonated with me, and encouraged me. Here was someone who had to face his fear, and overcame it. You see that fear in that little moment of hesitation where he asks himself if he's going to run and face dishonor or stand his ground and fight, come what may. And yet, as the Trojans close in upon him, he lunges first. He chooses to do what is right - not necessarily with a lot of pomp and bravado (in contrast to some of the other characters) but with true courage. I connected with him in that little moment of hesitation...how often do I want to take the easy way out in a challenging situation? Am I going to turn and run, or set my fears aside and 'lunge first'?

 

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DTK Chapter 5, Part 1: The Liturgical Year

Easter Sunday 2010, Australia

 

At the very end of chapter 4, Smith starts shifting gears a little bit towards where he is heading with chapter 5 – a detailed look at the various liturgical practices that are contained within a worship service – what truths they are meant to embody and how they can be a helpful counter-formation to the ‘secular’ liturgies of our modern culture.  Even though I still maintain that ideas, belief, and doctrine must inform our practices (rather than the other way around as Smith claims), I found this section really interesting and helpful to think about.    I come from a pretty generic non-denominational, evangelical background that has (unfortunately, in my opinion), shed quite a few of these liturgical practices in an effort to become more ‘relevant’ and ‘applicable’.  Smith points out that when we lose some of these traditional practices, we also lose some of the ‘counter-formational’ benefit to worship. Chapter 5 is a long and meaty chapter, and even with it broken up over 5 weeks, I still doubt I will comment on every practice that Smith mentions.  I do hope to be able to comment on those that I found most interesting and significant.   And I may also take some time to comment on some of the other practices that we have found helpful in our home even if they aren’t mentioned by Smith in this chapter.  This week’s section started off with a discussion of the liturgical year.

 

Advent Candles in France, 2012

 

Smith points out several ways that following the seasons of the church year can be an effective counter-formation to our secular culture:

• Celebrating Advent as a time of waiting, longing, and expectation is clearly a different orientation to the over-commercialization of the Season.
• Celebrating the seasons of the church year reminds us that our Messiah “does not float in some esoteric, ahistorical heaven, but [is one] who made a dent on the calendar – and will again.”
• Celebrating the seasons of the church year counters the idea of ‘presentism’ and living for the moment as it remembers back to the events of Christ in history and points forward to His return and coming kingdom.  (We also do this in Communion as we look back and remember what Christ has done and ‘proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes’.)  We become people of expectancy – we have the sense that this world isn’t all there is.  “Thus we are constituted as a people who live between times, remembering and hoping at the same time.”

 

Advent Candles in Cameroon, 2013

 

I don’t come from a church tradition that particularly values the seasons of the church year – maybe a nod to Advent, and Easter Sunday is a big deal of course.   In my family growing up, we pretty much tacked “Jesus” on to the rest of the hype of the season – sure, Christmas and Easter were about Jesus, but they were also about glitz and food and parties and candy and presents (and as a student heavily involved in the performing arts in high school, an over-the-top performance schedule).   We might have gone around with our nifty “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” buttons, but really, was He?  Not so much I don’t think – at least this is not the sense that I got as a child.    My husband comes from a similar background, and as we started our own family we both had the sense that something was missing.  I’d read about some of the meaningful liturgical traditions that some of the Catholic bloggers I like to follow practiced in their homes and began thinking about how we could make some of those ideas work within the context of our belief system.  I wanted that sense of beauty and rhythm and Christ-centered traditions in our home too.    We began to be intentional about bringing Jesus back as the centerpiece of our Christmas celebrations.  Several years later, we realized that Easter really gets glossed over while Christmas gets all the hype.  This seemed sort of disproportionate to us – Jesus’ death and resurrection is the focal point of the Christian faith.  If we don’t have those, we have nothing, you know?   Didn’t it deserve at least as much attention as Christmas did then?   So we began to be more intentional about observing the season of Lent as it led up to Easter.   That’s still a work in progress.  (Actually I had resolved back at the end of 2012 that 2013 would be the year of being more intentional about bringing these kinds of liturgical practices into our home…and then we moved to Africa. J  I am just now picking up the pieces.)  Both in Advent and in Lent we light candles every evening.  We do special family devotionals.  This year we’re hoping to extend our Lent meditations through the season of Easter.  We go fairly easy on the gifts, decorations, treats, and other activities – we’ve not gotten rid of them altogether, but we’ve tried to ensure that they don’t completely take over life in those seasons either.  Over the years, we have come to really love these simple family traditions – and I think that perhaps our children are starting to pick up on them too.  It didn’t even faze them that our Christmas packages from grandparents arrived 3 months late this year.  That’s not the focal point of the celebration for them.  These simple practices have helped keep our hearts focused on Christ rather than all the commercial hype of these holiday seasons and have given us something constant to hold onto in the midst of all of the moves our family has made over the last several years – this is the first time since 2009 we’ve set up our Advent and Lent-Easter candle displays in the same house (let alone same country!) two years in a row!  It’s a comforting reminder that the truth of the gospel doesn’t change even when the world all around us does.

 

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February's Nature Notes

Weather Report: The rains arrived February 27!   According to our Family Nature Notes, we had our break-the-dry-season storm last year on February 25 – right on schedule. J  We aren’t in true ‘rainy season’ yet, but the transition has begun.   That means occasional really crazy wind-and-rain-and-thunder-and-lighting-knock-out-the-electricity storms and a slight cooling trend in the weather.   It’s still plenty hot on the days that it doesn’t rain (I feel as if I’m about to melt as I type…), but at least the dryness and dust are behind us for now.

 

 

One of our goals for nature study this year is to make some more detailed observations of things in our surroundings.  Here are a couple of plants from our neighborhood that we’ve taken a closer look at this month:

 

Crab’s Claw

French: ‘Bec de Perroquet’ (Parakeet Beak)

 

 

This is one of those really common tropical plants – I remember seeing them when we lived in Papua New Guinea and in Cairns, Australia (tropical Far North Queensland) too.  They are really fascinating, though.  Apparently they are related to banana plants, which aren’t actually trees.  The “trunks” are really multiple leaf stalks encompassing each other.   The colorful bracts look like pockets and the flowers grow inside – the ones we observed this particular day weren’t in bloom, but I have seen them flowering before.  In these ones we could see the dead remains of the flowers inside the pockets.

 

 

Papaya

 

 

Once again Michelle (age 8) showed me up with this one and correctly identified the plant growing just outside our kitchen window as a papaya.  I have seen papaya plants before, and know what they look like.  I have seen this plant every day for over a year and often wondered what it was.  Silly mama.  I’m seriously handing all plant identification over to my kids now!   This is a fairly young papaya plant which has not yet produced any fruit, so that may have been what threw me off.  This is another “tree” that isn’t really a tree, but a large herb according to our plant guide Tropical Plants of the World.

 

Some of its features….

 

It has a narrow hollow trunk covered with leaf-scars – the new growth is all along the top, so the ‘scars’ mark where old branches have fallen off as the plant grows.

 

 

The branches are hollow too, and the plant has a milky sap.  

 

 

This tree is finally producing some buds, they are growing right along the trunk at the base of each branch near the top.

 

 

 

The leaves are amazing.  They are huge and ornate!  Our kids like to play that they are “umbrellas” sometimes.  I’ve heard you can boil the leaves into a tea as a natural malaria preventative, although I’ve never tried it (I’ve heard it doesn’t taste all that great).

 

 

Mango

 

 

We’re also keeping an eye on our mango tree, which now has LOTS of baby mangos on it.  This gives you an idea of their size a couple of weeks ago (these blew down in a storm).   I failed to note when the mangos came ripe last year, but I’m thinking the season was in April and May.  Soon, soon!

 

 

 

What have you seen in your neck of the woods this month?

 

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Wednesday with Words: On Standing for Truth

I recently finished reading Eric Metaxas’ biography of William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace.  This dynamic man was a major influence behind the abolition of the slave trade in England and her colonies in the latter part of the 1700’s and early part of the 1800’s.  It was fascinating to read about his early life, his conversion to Christianity as a young man, and his long and dogged fight to end the slave trade no matter the cost.   I also found it interesting to gain a better understanding about the time in which he lived.  Wilberforce’s lifetime spanned the same time period that Jane Austen’s novels were set in.   When I read Austen, life often seems very peaceful, very serene, and very, very proper (although Mansfield Park does touch on some seedier themes of that era, including the slave trade).  Reading this made me realize that there were all kinds of social problems in that time, many wicked things that were tolerated, and a very critical attitude towards true Biblical Christianity (as opposed to just ‘church-going’).   I have a tendency to want to idealize the “good old days”, but really the world was not really a better place back then.   This makes Wilberforce’s story even more applicable and inspirational to us today – who is going to stand boldly for Truth as he did?

 

These are the words inscribed upon Wilberforce’s tomb in Westminster Abbey, which Metaxas notes were probably penned by his friend Thomas Macaulay.  Oh to leave such a legacy!:

 

To the memory of

William Wilberforce

(Born in Hull August 24^th 1759, Died in London July 29^th 1833;)

For nearly half a century a member of the House of Commons,

And, for six Parliaments during that period,  one of the two representatives for Yorkshire.

 

In an age and country fertile in great and good men,

He was among the foremost of those who fixed the character of their times

because to high and various talents to warm benevolence, and to universal candour,

He added the abiding eloquence of a Christian life.

 

Eminent as he was in every department of public labour, and a leader in every work of charity,

Whether to relieve the temporal or the spiritual wants of his fellow men

His name will ever be specially identified with those exertions which, by the blessing of God,

Removed from England the guilt of the African slave trade, and prepared the way for the abolition of slavery in every colony of the Empire:

 

In the prosecution of these objects, he relied, not in vain, on God;

But in the progress, he was called to endure great obloquy and great opposition:

He outlived, however, all his enmity:

And, in the evening of his days, withdrew from public life and public observation to the bosom of his family.

Yet he died not unnoticed or forgotten by his country:

The peers and commons of England, with the Lord Chancellor, and the speaker at their head,

Carried him to his fitting place among the mighty dead around, here to repose:

Till, through the merits of Jesus Christ, his only Redeemer and Savior,

(Whom, in his life and in his writings he had desired to glorify,)

He shall rise in the resurrection of the just.

 

~Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace

 

 

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