Reading for 2008

Dominion Family and Mommy Brain have lists of their reading in 2007. And Faith at Dumb Ox Academy has made a list of her reading plans for 2008. These are fun to look over for ideas.

I was not organized enough to keep track of my reading throughout 2007. What I did list is here and here. I just do not have the energy right now to extract all the names of books from those long reviews, but next year I propose to do better about keeping lists.

I think, though, that I'll try once again to list reading goals. Like Faith's, but by season rather than for the whole year.


Right now I am reading:

• From Dawn to Decadence
• Economics in One Lesson

I just got from the library:

• Auralia's Colors
• The Legend of the Firefish
• Tevye's Daughters

so I will probably read those as a break from the heavier ones.

That's the plan, which will probably take me through winter.

There ought to be some self-help/pop psychology books in there somewhere. It is funny that my daughter's violin teacher and I both read self-help books for light reading. I suppose the good ones are a bit like a collection of short stories with a theme, or like talking to with a bunch of memories wrapped around a single topic. But I only do it when I'm too tired even to read a good novel. I suppose it's the equivalent of watching Oprah or Dr. Phil for people like me who hate watching TV (and I actually did read 2 Dr Phil books last year because our library had them in the dime rack).

I have been trying to read a book of poems by Emily Dickinson but forgot about it for a while.

• I intend to read Paradise Lost.

There is also a collection of education-related books that I am going through slowly:

• The Art of Teaching
• A Humane Psychology of Education
• Effective Study
• Studying is Hard Work

and after I read Economics in One Lesson I want to read Small is Still Beautiful.

As for the GBWW I want to start with Montesquieu and Locke and go from there.

Happy New Year!

a bit more on resolutions and how they work here

The David Allen system "Getting Things Done" helped me see the connection between the big picture "important but not urgent" goals and the micro-task "actionable steps" that make the goal come into actual being. I thought I'd try to describe what I have learned and am still learning since it seems to be more of a process than an outcome.

First, actions ought to be set in time so that they actually happen. For me this is the tricky part; it does not come naturally, but if I remember to peg the actions down into a time frame and frame them into verbs, they are much more likely to actually occur.

Some examples from my list of resolutions in my last post -- the resolutions themselves, and then some possible actionable steps:

• Travelling the rest of the way to Rivendell. (ride the exercise bike for 3 miles a day).
• Keep to my target weight range. (start a food journal again, since my good habits have been slipping).
• Eat properly and make proper food for my family (more vegetables on the shopping list; regular eating times; browse through cookbooks every Sunday afternoon).
• Write my story (Liam suggested waking up at 7 am every morning to write for an hour or two, and this is working, though 7:30 is a bit more like it).
• Reading the Great Books of the Western World (get the books, which I just did by spending some Christmas money at Advanced Book Exchange; a second step might be to set aside a half hour or so to actually read every day)

And so on. You see, I wouldn't want to set my resolutions down in the micro-task form because I wouldn't be motivated to keep them -- for me, that would be like seeing the twigs on the trees and completely missing the forest.

But merely pondering vista-level goals doesn't work either because those are assumed. "preserve personal and family health" "further my education and that of my kids" "build a strong family culture"-- those are helpful in prioritizing and in setting my life direction, but not so much useful for planning goals, because in themselves they don't indicate any strategy.

The middle-ground goals are the ones that work for me because I can change the strategy as necessary. When Liam goes back to school and we start homeschooling again, waking up at 7 to write might not work because I have to plan my homeschooling during that time. If I get the "buying more vegetables" down into a routine, I may want to switch over to some other actionable step in the pursuit of family health. So the action steps might change, but hopefully the goals will stay current (I'll let you know).

David Allen says that sometimes, when a project or goal is not getting done, the problem is that it hasn't been broken down into a task that is concrete and immediate enough. This has been helpful for me to remember; it falls under the category of "preparation" that I mentioned in my last post.

That is, when I'm procrastinating, it's often because the task is too complex, even if it seems simple on the surface. Sometimes I find myself procrastinating on a phone call, for example, and once I think about it, I realize that I have to find the phone number and say, get my insurance card out of my purse. Those are the real "first steps" before the phone call can take place. I used to simply scold myself for procrastination, but that was not helpful, because it didn't address the real problem -- that I was bogged down in procedural details, or sometimes in an emotional morass -- sometimes I hold back on a phone call because I am scared to make it, for example. But once I know what the problem is, I can usually manage to address it.

Those vista-level, big picture life goals? They are helpful in a different way. They give me a vision. Every once in a while it is valuable to look over one's life and see if it's generally going the way it ought to. For me it is valuable, though challenging, to try to picture my "dream life." It's challenging because it's discouraging. But it really does help. I look around me at people I know and what their lives are like; I read books that put substance to my dreams; I look at my hopes and wishes and try not to discard them too soon because of missing pieces.

The final corollary to all this is that my cornerstone goal is probably the last one, to sit down with my goals every couple of weeks or month and see if the proximate, actionable-steps need to be revised or as the special needs jargon has it, "carried over" -- continued until mastered. If I do this consistently I will have way more chance of getting the rest of it done (as opposed to forgetting all about it). At the same time I can try to reflect on the big-picture, "remote" goals. And I can decide if the mediate-level goals need to be reprioritized. That is idealistic, but if I do the first part regularly, I'll be at the 75% level at least.

I notice that different things shift to higher priority at different times. Right now, we are on vacation so lesson planning and homeschooling is on the back burner and informal family time is up in front place. At another time, the household management gets a higher billing (usually in the summer, when I'm setting things up for the next year). This is part of the seasonal focus I've been thinking about a lot through our years of family life.

Random Thoughts on Goals

That last post about resolutions was quite jumbled. Sorry, but I can't figure out how to improve it. The story I'm writing even though Nanowrimo is over is going quite nicely, and it must use a different part of my brain because I can't seem to write a blog post I'm happy with.

Liam and I agreed to wake up at 7 every morning to work on our stories, and that's made all the difference, so I'm going to use that as a paradigm for something I wanted to remember about methods in setting out resolutions.

Goal-setting ought to be a process, not just a onetime thing. I think that's important. Different things will work at different times. I used to think there was a problem with my follow-through if something that worked once didn't work twice, but now I think it's more along the lines of: You can't step in the exact same river twice. It may be the same river, but not the same water. Newman says that people, being finite, have to change in order to keep their ground.

Also, it has been helping me to remember that there is a flow between larger goals and smaller action steps. Maybe that's another way of talking about the river. If I can tie a simple action step to my big picture goal, the goal is much more likely to get carried through. I think that is the idea behind some of the traditional Catholic "mental prayer" guidelines. They are often set in terms of "Considerations; Affections; Resolutions." You think about something with your mind, then try to involve your heart, then your will.

So take my goal of story-writing. I want to keep writing my story, and eventually have a finished product. So I plan my plotline, ponder the happiness of having a story to work on -- but then a simple practical idea like "get up at 7 am and write for an hour" is what actually makes the difference in doing it.

I know there are people who find the practical ideas easier.

Goal Setting

Here is a good Goal Setting vs Scheduling post.

Goals are long term "improvements" to expectations. Expectations are just that - activities that are scheduled. School work, chores, family time, sports, volunteer activities, hobbies, and clubs are examples of expectations. Assigning priority to expectations into blocks of available time teaches time management. It teaches that sometimes, you can't do everything. Priorities come first.

That says a lot already, and there is more -- a checklist of life goals and how to translate them into actionable statements. A lot of it is directed towards teaching your children these time management skills. As I mentioned, usually it is my kids that teach ME these management skills.

Resolutions and Retrospectives

I thought that since I came across Running River Latin School's reminder "It's that time of year again," that I would try to think about some of the resolutions I've made -- last year and this year -- and some resolutions made by other folk as well, gathered by Leonie in 2007 in this carnival.

Here is the short list form of my resolutions for this year:

• Make it the rest of the way to Rivendell. Then find another journey to go on.
• Stay in my target weight range.
• Eat properly and make decent food for my family.
• Continue our family story society (which means continue my story, which means getting past writer's block).
• Keep the under-structure of our house organized (that means, though the floor might get messy, we have a cleaning and organization system that works so we can find things we want and avoid things we don't want, like super-bacteria.)
• Same with time management.
  
• Cycle back through the 2007 Learning Goals, on a more practical level this time.
  
• Study 5 encyclicals, 4 GBWW, and the Bible in English with a regular habit of reference to the Greek and Latin (There! That's concrete!)
  
• Spend time with my family -- reading, games, conversations, travels and traditions. Schedule this in and plan accountability checks.
• Look over my goals at regular times -- once a month -- and see how I'm doing on them.
  

Now for the long and rambling retrospective bit:

One of the things I like about blogging is the easy accountability. All my other New Years' resolutions have been buried in a notebook somewhere with a bunch of other notebooks in a back closet. I never see them again. But with blogging, all you have to do is type in the search box and you can see what you did and failed to do. Clarity.

I see that last year I did fair to middling on most of my resolutions.

For the household goal -- last year it was Celebrating Abundance. This year I'd like to come to terms with my household economy. The etymology of "economics" is "household management" -- oikos, house, and numein, manage, according to this site. I am feeling like I have been on a bit of a false track on the management bit. I don't think I can put it into words yet but I hope to be able to eventually. But as far as a specific goal -- last year I got quite a bit better at organizing my time and space under the surface. The house and time management still has surface glitches but I can find things and remember things better than I could last year. My Heart of Home blog helped me with this so I will continue that.

For the "holos" -- sound mind in sound body -- goal:

• I didn't make it all the way to Rivendell, but I am two thirds of the way there. Acquiring Shadowfax, or at least Bill the Pony, in the form of a Schwinn exercise bike, helped quite a bit .
  
• I lost some weight and then gained some of it back again, but I know quite a bit more about how to do it than I did last year, at least.
  
• I really did progress in respecting my health. You will have to take my word for it since it is difficult to quantify.
  

For the learning goals:

• I did pretty well on the Learning Goals for 2007. I'd give that a 2/3rds too. I am going to cycle back through them this year, hopefully on a more practical level. The idea of devoting each month to pondering a method was very useful.
• I think I shall extend it by pondering on a different "habit" or virtue every month. Making a list of those will have to wait though.
  
• My academic self education goals are listed in the "this year" link above. I wanted to read the whole Bible in Greek and Latin, peruse every encyclical written in history, and go through the Great Books of the Western World. But I will settle for less than that (see list above).
  

For the big picture:

Once again I have a new take on Age quod Agis -- well, it is an old take, but I am thinking about it in a new way. This year I'm focusing on another motto of St Maximilian Kolbe's:

Preparation—Action—Conclusion.

Simple, but rich. I would particularly like to focus on the Preparation part of this because it's very often where I fall down. Oddly, my developmentally delayed 8 year old Aidan is a bit of a mentor for me in this. For instance, when I started kneading pizza dough, he immediately gets out the pizza pans and oil. When I am frying bacon, he grabs some paper towels and arranges them on the counter beside me so that I can put them on there. When we are at Mass, he knows exactly at what point in the service to look for the offering envelope (he is the one who puts the gift into the basket). I could give more examples. He falls down on conclusion (always forgets to put his shoes away so there are some epic hunts for where he decided to leave them each time) but he is quite gifted at anticipation. Why can't I do that? So that's my vague "theme" for this year -- to try to think ahead. Astonishing how difficult it is for me.

The tips I quoted last year said to make specific resolutions and goals that could be easily quantified. That is no doubt good advice. But I notice the ones that really make a difference in my life are the Quadrant II ones. ... the first things first ones. I think from what I understand about Covey's system, the Quadrant II focus is supposed to keep you from always having to put out fires -- or trying to grab for the paper towels when the bacon is already on the point of being too crisp and you don't remember exactly where you put the paper towel roll anyway. Thank you, Aidan. But those preparation activities are meant, in turn, to be informed by big-picture life decisions. So it's good to get those straight because that prevents you from dashing wildly off in all directions. There is a good post here on goal setting that makes the point that goal setting, as opposed to scheduling, is a good way to build motivation and manage time, rather than be managed by it. It is a useful skill to teach your children -- or be taught by them.

ETA: Food for Thought for the New Year by Et Tu? (Hat Tip: The Genial Hearth)

Right Brained Learners -- Study and Test-Taking Skills

I took these notes a year or so ago when I was learning about Right Brained Learners. As one myself, I think the most helpful tips for me have been the speed-reading to get the big picture, and the idea of visualizing as I read. As to minimizing distractions, I am one of the subset who actually works better with some background noise. I finally figured out in college that the best way to write a paper was to go to a cafe, and my work improved quite a bit after that. I tell my kids to experiment with different environments and see which one works best for them.

Notetaking and outlining usually are difficult for RBL to use well either for studying or for writing. When I was in college I took notes on lectures, but they were almost useless to look at later. The only thing that helped, for me, was to physically rewrite the notes, preferably in a new format so I could think about them in a new way.

What works far better for me is a keyword map. This works for both studying and writing. I just jot down a phrase or vivid word here and there and use it as a “peg” for retrieval.

Anyway, here are the notes.

Studying

Don’t nag

Minimize distractions

Short, intense study periods

Speed-reading techniques — read quickly, to get the big picture, then read again to fill in the details.

Use visualization to memorize charts and things.

Outlines and notecards often not effective for RBLs in writing. Just sit down and write, then put in shape as you go along. For a young child, help him start by helping him write out the first bit.

Follow study sessions with a motivating activity, vary pace.

Test-Taking

RBLs often do poorly in timed-test situation.

He should skim test until he finds a “sure bet”

If he is panicking, he should take a “mini vacation”

Save tougher questions for last

Avoid timed work when possible.

Fourth Day of Christmas

This is one of my favorite times of the year. Advent is usually stressful, unfortunately. I really dislike shopping for Christmas presents, even when I do it mostly online with no rushing through malls. I just dislike spending the money and making the choices and reflecting on how many more years I have ahead of me of doing this since my youngest is only five. We already have so many toys, I tell you. I toss ruthlessly throughout the year, and we don’t really buy that much, but toys seem to generate toys. There are always too many. It ruins Advent for me, thinking about these things and not knowing quite what to do about them.

But the time when Christmas Day is over, the festive season between Christmas and Epiphany, is usually a good time. Almost every year something happens, so it’s not necessarily a comfortable time. One year we lost all our electrical power for 2 weeks in a major, major blizzard that went on and on. Our whole region’s power was down and we huddled in front of the fireplace to keep warm with one little camp lantern and some flashlights and candles. Last year our water heater was out for 2 weeks and we heated water on the stove to clean ourselves and the dishes. Another year we all got the flu and Aidan ended up in the hospital in an overflow ward while the other children were in the throes of fever delirium at home. For some reason, perhaps family-closeness reasons and because Liam is home from college, these kinds of events haven’t ruined the twelve days of Christmas for us.

I made some progress on my story! No, it’s no longer Novel November, but I did really want to write this story even if it’s one of those cases of walking the last miles of the marathon. Liam, my oldest who is home from college, has made a pact with me; we are to wake up at around 7 am every day and spend an hour or two writing. I agreed to this. The conversation took place in front of the other kids and two of them asked me today if we really did get up at 7. The answer is “not quite”. We stayed up till past midnight watching “Lady in the Water” and then I had trouble sleeping, so I woke up at 7:30 and then only because Aidan was buzzing me (his word for “bugging”).

Today we drove Aidan down to his monthly blood draw at the hospital. One of the disadvantages of living where we do is that we have to drive 50 miles for routine appointments and laboratory visits. Another disadvantage at this time of year is that there are blizzards at regular intervals. So I wanted to get down there between blizzards. When we got back, Clare wanted me to take a photo of our whole crew as “The Magnificent Seven” (since there are seven of them ranging from 5 years old to 21 years old). So we went out in the snow and took photos.

I vacuumed all the corners for the first time in a couple of months, and caught up on the laundry.

Aidan and Paddy got a set of wooden blocks for Christmas. We used to have some when the older kids were small but they don’t seem to be around the house anymore. I thought that wooden blocks are probably one of those developmental imperatives and worth the 40$. For the first few days the blocks simply sat there in their storage box. The little ones were playing with the more accessible gadgets, like the remote control car they got at their grandma’s house. Then Aidan got one of the curved blocks out and pretended it was a phone. Then he made “Grandma’s house”. Then he started stacking the pillars up to see how high they would go (putting my laptop in danger since he was right next to me). Then he made a “pizza” out of triangles. At present there are blocks in carefully arranged patterns all over the floor. Hooray for the simple basic toys!

Some Learning Goals for 2008

αμαθεστατε και κακε, αφες τον παλαιον, μη μεταποιει
(Fool and knave, can't you leave the old reading alone and not alter it!)

—The complaint of a scribe, written in the margin of Codex Vaticanus at Heb. 1:3.

My father gave me a Latin Vulgate Bible for Christmas. This is thrilling. He bought me one once before, but I gave it to Liam to take to college with him since I had more accessible internet than he did at the time. But I have missed it very much since.

When I was visiting them in Alaska, my father told me about his recent habit of combined devotions and language study. He reads a given section of the Bible in the Latin Vulgate. Then he reads it in Greek. Then he reads an English translation. (I may have the order wrong). This allows him to keep up familiarity with Latin and Greek and also really get deeply into the language of the Scripture. This kind of studying is so typical of my father. Anyway, I thought I might do something slightly similar on a way more amateurish scale. It might help me keep just slightly ahead of my two middle ones in those languages, which would be nice, plus provide a new way to ponder the familiar Gospels. Nathaniel Bowditch, I read once, whenever he wanted to learn a new language, would acquire a Bible in that language. Since he knew the contents of the Bible so well, he could inductively discover the grammar and vocabulary of the new language from the context of the Bible.

The cranky quote above is from this site with links to Greek New Testaments. Here is another Greek NT. And here is the Vulgate Bible online with interlinear King James and Douay Rheims translations.

audiens sapiens sapientior erit et intellegens gubernacula possidebit
"A wise man shall hear, and shall be wiser: and he that understandeth shall possess governments."
(from the Vulgate/Douay Rheims/King James site linked above).

I need my Costco magnifying spectacles to read the hardbound Vulgate, which is sad. Another book in the "magnifying spectacles" and "acquired from my father" category that I am reading is From Dawn to Decadence which I first heard about at Dominion Family. So far I am agreeing with her take on it. It takes forever to read ten pages and the magnifying glasses give me a headache. But I really want to finish it. The reason I was motivated to start it was because of Liam talking about Spinoza. The only book I could find around the house on this time period was Classics of Western Thought, vol 2, which was one of my college texts. It is basically an anthology, like Norton's, of well, the classics of Western thought. I read this over Christmas. ...not the medieval section, but the Renaissance and Reformation selections. But it was only a taste of, let's see, Castiglione, Montaigne, Cellini, Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin. Just a sample, and not enough. Then I decided that Dawn to Decadence might give me a big picture view. I am not sure yet if it will or not. It is interesting, though. I decided to read Pope John Paul II's Fides et Ratio as well, and finished that yesterday. I had read excerpts of it previously, but never the whole thing, so I'm glad this weird recent obsession of mine with secularist philosophy led me to follow through with reading this excellent document.

Besides doing the interlinear Bible study I described above, and furthering my understanding of vulgate Latin and koine Greek, I hope to:

• Read several more of these Encyclicals.(They are arranged in chronological order on this site, which is very nice)
  
• Read several more of these Great Books of the Western World.

This would have seemed way way too ambitious to me last year, but for some reason, I have recently been able to confront books that would have daunted me before. It is very strange. I just read several old books on studying and learning, from the bibliography of Francis Crotty's Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home, and so perhaps I have absorbed some of the methods proposed in the books.

So those are my three learning goals for 2008. I am keeping them quite vague because -- well -- just because. I do not know how long this enthusiasm will last.

Hilda Van Stockum and Trinity College

While I was looking for the picture of our "Little Kings" for my last Christmas post (our last name means little king and so for the purpose my daughter counts as a king too, and indeed why not?) -- I found this picture I took at Trinity College in Dublin last summer. It was absolutely pouring rain that day in June, and they didn't let you so much as bring out a camera inside the college, but I did get this one outside shot.

Since I know Love2Learn Mom likes Hilda van Stockum (our family is combination Irish Dutch just like theirs and HVS's) I thought she and perhaps some others of my Catholic and/or Irish and/or literature-loving friends would like this photo. Unfortunately, I must have had trouble maneuvering my umbrella so I didn't get a complete good shot of the insignia on this bench, but I guess you can abstract the universal from the 2 particulars, at least a bit. And you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.




You can see a photo of the wedding of Spike Marlin, who is memorialized here on the bench in the photo, and Hilda Van Stockum, in 1932 at Trinity College, if you go here (and scroll down a bit)

This has nothing much to do with Hilda Van Stockum, but outside of Trinity College I also got this extraordinary building title:


I had to get a picture of that, though I didn't know at the time that it is the oldest charity in Dublin (I'm thinking they mean the oldest bourgeoisie/layman operated one, or the oldest one still in existence).

To tie in the charity building photo with Van Stockum, here is a St Nicholas Day Message by Hilda Van Stockum. She writes (about the advertising /consumerist rush at Christmas, I suppose):

In a sense, how we use our money determines not only our own lives but those of others too. If we wish for foolish, vulgar or ugly objects, and make others want them, a certain number of people will spend their lives making them. What we ask for, will be supplied. What we make, others will be induced to ask for. But is there no place in these transactions for a thought as to their usefulness, or moral value?

This is a very complex and difficult question. What one person considers good and necessary, may be despised by another. There are no hard and fast rules. But I do suggest that this side of the matter is worthy of attention.

I think we all have a responsibility, whether we like it or not. We will be answerable one day, I believe, for the way in which we spent our money, or caused others to spend it.

Hilda van Stockum died only last year in 2006, on All Saints Day.

One of her six children remembers her saying:

'If you aren't hungry for an apple, you aren't hungry at all!'

That makes me laugh, because my mother used to say exactly the same thing to us.

She also loved dressing up as St Nicholas for his feastday, according to another one of her children.

And she thought the world needs more Catholic philosophers (I am just reading Pope John Paul II's Fides et Ratio which makes the same point!)

Here is a cute story about her conversion (she was brought up by atheists and became a Catholic after her marriage).

St. Thomas Aquinas, G.K. Chesterton, Fulton Sheen, Ronald Knox. but it was Arnold Lunn's "Now I See" that finally brought Mother to the Catholic Church. She always said that when she closed the book it suddenly hit her: "I'm not thinking about being a Catholic, I am a Catholic!" With that she went out into the street and asked the first passer-by "Where is the nearest Catholic Church?" She went up to the rectory door, knocked, and said to the priest who opened it: "I'm a Catholic and I want to be baptized!" After a few enquiries he said: "You're a case for Fr X." It turned out that this was an elderly priest, a bit confused, but eager to make converts. After talking to Daddy, Mother went through the classes and the time came for her to be received into the Catholic Church. "What about the children?" she asked. And Daddy said "You better look after them". So we were all baptized together. The priest was a bit harassed with three children and Mother to baptize, and in the end he asked anxiously: "Have I done them all, or have I done one twice?"

Clean Sweeps

I did a clean sweep of my Google Reader. Believe it or not, I had over 300 subscriptions on there. I did not read them all — how could I? But they were all there, constantly making me feel like I had a lot to do. I am re-adding the ones that I actually READ, but slowly. Funny, the amount of blog-reading I do now is about the same, but I feel so much more peaceful.

About 6-10 times a year, I give myself permission to be really ruthless when I’m going through the house. Anything that I don’t love, or that isn’t respected enough in our home to be kept in good trim, goes into the wastebasket or the Goodwill box. I shouldn’t say “anything” because there are some things I mostly keep my hands off; they are small enough and/or owned by someone else, and I leave them alone. And I only weed through books in the spring or summer; the rest of the year I just pile and stack those.

So I have been going through and tossing things. It is quite freeing. In some ways I wish I could do with my house what I did with my Reader — just clear the whole lot, then reintroduce what I really need. Once we did that in effect. We had to move to San Francisco to be with Aidan. We literally followed his ambulance all the way there then rented an apartment and brought the rest of the kids to join us. So Kevin would drive back home (a four hour trip each way) to get what we realllly needed from our house. It was surprising how little we needed and how we could “make do”; I have never forgotten that lesson, though of course there is a counter-thrill in having plenty. I know that getting rid of things or not getting them in the first place seems to partake more of virtue than accumulating things, but there is a kind of virtue in managing and stewarding a plenitude, too. It certainly takes more brain power, though, and it is not one of my gifts, and it’s not exactly how I want to spend my time, so that’s why I periodically have to go on “house diets” or “blog subscription diets” or whatever, and get rid of the excess.

Christmas Music

Christmas started yesterday evening, really, with the vigil mass at 5 pm. We got there early so Clare could practice; she cantored, and played violin for Silent Night. With the two boys as altar servers again, we were quite well represented in our small church. Then home; we ate Mexican food and settled the little ones down. Aidan went to sleep with no trouble, but was up at 5:30 trying to get everybody up. Paddy on the other hand, could not sleep until midnight but then had to be wakened the next morning.

We had our quiet family celebration in the morning; stockings laden with sweets, and then a few presents. Among them: Palestrina, Canon Tallis, Mozart and Bach CDs for Liam, plus Christopher Parkening playing classical guitar, and the Romero Brothers. Clare had asked for the Scarlet Pimpernel musical soundtrack, and she got a Burt’s Bees sampler pack and some hair clips as well. Brendan had asked for wind chimes; loud ones. He got those, as well as a pocket knife (he says he already has one, so I’m going to trade him for a pair of good scissors, since I can use a pocket knife myself). Kieron had a Lego and X Box hockey, and Sean got a wallet and X Box football. The little boys got mostly Doug and Melissa things — a letter box, and a bead patterning box, and pattern blocks, and some regular wooden blocks. The younger ones also got swords.

Then we went down to our extended-family celebrations in town, driving down from clear blue skies and snow to fog and mist. We played a gift exchange game where you draw numbers and then pick from a pool of mystery gifts. You have the option of “stealing” a gift from someone who has already picked, or of taking your chances with a new one. With 21 players of various ages and preferences, the game went quite well.

Afterwards, we went to a park so Sean’s uncle could work on football skills with him, and I called my dear friend up in Oregon whom I still miss extremely though it has been 12 years since we moved from there. I am glad the first day (!) of Christmas is over, and the most challenging one. From this point on it seems like the year winds down, though it is more accurately UP since the winter solstice has passed and the days are lengthening. Either way, one season has passed and another has begun.

While the children ate their candy and played with their Christmas gifts, I moved through the house leisurely putting things to rights, throwing away trash (burning it when possible), straightening, making room for new things and putting away old things. There is closure in this. It was something I was having a difficult time doing the past couple of weeks, but now it seems easy and pleasant and natural.

The Way of the Reason

I have always been a bit bothered by the section of Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles where she talks about the "Way of the Reason":

The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to 'lean (too confidently) to their own understanding'; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth, (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.

Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.

The part that puzzles me is that initial "acceptance or rejection of ideas".

According to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, human reason, to say it as such, 'breathes,' that is, it moves on a wide-open horizon in which it can experience the best of itself. Nonetheless, when man limits himself to think only of material and experimental objects, he closes himself to the questions of life, about himself and about God, impoverishing himself." --

Benedict XVI, Feast of Thomas Aquinas, January 2007


From the Catholic Encyclopedia on Reason:

Ratio, in opposition to res, denotes the mode or act of thinking; by extension it comes to designate on the one hand the faculty of thinking and on the other the formal element of thought, such as plan, account, ground, etc. This wide use of the word reason to denote the cognitive faculty (especially when dealing with intrinsic evidence, as opposed to authority) is still the commonest.

....In its general sense, therefore, reason may be attributed to God, and an angel may be called rational. But in its narrower meaning reason is man's differentia, at once his necessity and his privilege; that by which he is "a little less than the angels", and that by which he excels the brutes. Reasoning, as St. Thomas says, is a defect of intellect. True, in certain acts our mind functions as intellect; there are immediate truths (ámesa) and first principles (archaí) which we intuit or grasp with our intellect; and in such verities there can be no deception or error. .... Within a certain region our cognitive faculties are absolutely infallible.

Yet the Scholastics also unanimously hold that man's specific mark is ratiocination or discursus. .... in this life our knowledge is a thing of shreds and patches, laboriously woven from the threads of sense..... our actual human experience.... is a gignómenon, a coming to be. Man is rational in the sense that he is a being who arrives at conclusions from premises. Our intellectual life is a process, a voyage of discovery; our knowledge is not a static ready-made whole; it is rather an organism instinct with life and growth. Each new conclusion becomes the basis of further inference.

Hence, too, the word reason is used to signify a premise or ground of knowledge, as distinguished from a cause or real ground. So important is this distinction that one may say herein lies the nucleus of all philosophy. The task of the philosopher is to distinguish the a priori of logic form from the a priori of time; and that this task is a difficult one is testified by the existence of the many systems of psychologism and evolutionism. Reasoning, therefore, must be asserted to be a process sui generis.

This is perhaps the best answer to give to the question, so much discussed by the old logicians, as to what kind of causative influence the premises exert on the conclusion. We can only say, they validate it, they are its warrant. For inference is not a mere succession in time ; it is a nexus thought-of, not merely an association between thoughts. An irrational conclusion or a misleading association is as much a fact and a result as a correct conclusion; the existence of the latter is explained only by its logical parentage. Hence the futility of trying to account completely for the existence of a human thought--the conclusion of a train of reasoning--simply by the accompanying sense-data and psychological associations.

I will leave it there for now. It seems to me that Charlotte Mason is using the word "reason" in the sense of the discursive process, what the CE calls "ratiocination". She holds (or it seems so to me) that the original premises or principles (she uses the term "ideas") are accepted by the will. Consequently, she says that the child's main role in dealing with ideas is to affirm or deny, which is puzzling to me. I will have to pore through Catholic philosophy a bit more to figure out if it has an equivalent notion of the will's role in accepting ideas.

The Catholic Encyclopedia's definition of Will includes this (I think I've quoted it before):

The term will as used in Catholic philosophy, may be briefly defined as the faculty of choice; it is classified among the appetites, and is contrasted with those which belong either to the merely sensitive or to the vegetative order: it is thus commonly designated "the rational appetite"; it stands in an authoritative relation to the complex of lower appetites, over which it exercises a preferential control; its specific act, therefore, when it if in full exercise, consists in selecting, by the light of reason, its object from among the various particular, conflicting aims of all the tendencies and faculties of our nature: its object is the good in general (bonum in communi); its prerogative is freedom in choosing among different forms of good.

This doesn't seem too far from CM's notion, but I shall have to think about it some more. I know from other reading on her notions of Will that she has a similar idea of it as being the commander of all the other parts of the human.

Merry Christmas!!!

Journaling Bits of the Day

What I should be doing is working on my story. But of course, it’s easier to blog. So I’m sitting here at the computer, trying to blog. I am having trouble of course, because my conscience is telling me to write my story.

When did it become so difficult to write fiction? I have been working on this story for about a year and a half; it was my oldest son who had the idea of a weekly meeting and though we can’t seem to keep up with the weekly thing while he is gone to college, it has become a regular family tradition. But my writer’s block causes me severe problems in this. With blogging, and with other kinds of writing, I can just. do. it. It doesn’t really matter if one entry isn’t very good. I can always do better next time. Visualizing and recounting a story though, seems quite a bit more stressful. No doubt this problem is partly in my head, but it’s made it difficult, and that is always a vicious cycle.

Other things going on:

Liam has been home a week and has two weeks left. This is one of the last times he is going to be home for a while, since Easter he is tentatively planning to stay at college and this summer he wants to go on a retreat to discern his future, and also try an internship at a computer game company. So he won’t be around for the whole time. Next year is his senior year, and after that he will probably mostly be gone for good (depending on what he ends up doing after he graduates). This is difficult. You can’t complain much when your kids go off into the world; this is what they are supposed to do. It’s a good thing. But you can’t make yourself not miss them, either. I am trying not to miss him too much in advance, though ;-).

We have been playing SET and Mystery of the Abbey. Aidan hates us playing the long games like Mystery of the Abbey (you’re supposed to eliminate all the possible murder suspects until you have the murderer, and then Reveal the answer). But he loves SET. He does not understand how it works, but he loves to grab up the cards and proclaim, SET! Tonight we plan to play Robo Rally and he will not like that, probably. But Paddy enjoys pretending to play .

Clare is finishing off the sewing on a Christmas dress she started a long time ago. She has been demoralized by a few problems in her most recent sewing projects, so the sewing machine has been inactive for some time. But now she is back at it, and I hope she succeeds.

Liam is setting up his new laptop. Kevin got it for him with work money. Liam works for Kevin’s computer game freelance business, doing some programming and design. It was supposed to be delivered on Friday, but a huge snowstorm intervened. The delivery guy brought it up a day late.

Kieron and Paddy have been playing Opening Night on the computer, but I am not sure what they are doing now; apparently quarrelling. Brendan and Sean are watching the Patriots game. The Patriots are Brendan’s team. Kevin is working on his model railroad. He got an airbrush which gives off this chemical smell which constantly alerts my subconscious, wrongly, that my laptop is frying.

Yesterday we went to Mass early. Clare had to get there early because she was practicing for the Christmas Eve mass; she is going to cantor and play the violin. Because the roads were still a bit icy and we thought it might be crowded in our ski-resort-area town, we decided to all go early. I was afraid it would be hard to keep the littlies happy for 2 hours in a confined setting but it turned out fine. It was nice and peaceful with the snow outside, watching everyone set up for our small chapel mass. Sean and Kieron got asked to serve as altar servers and they got little Target gift certificates, which was fun and unusual for them. Aidan cuddled with Kevin, and Paddy happily played on the Memo section of my Palm, “writing his story” called “Paddy’s 1st Story.” I don’t think I am describing this well, but there was a Christmas-card feeling to those couple of hours. It seemed like a corner out of time.

Tomorrow, we are going to clean the house, which needs it badly. Then we’ll probably go to the local store and library, and possibly I’ll do a tiny bit of last minute shopping. Then in the evening we will go to the vigil mass and that will usher in the expectancy of the Christmas Day.

Painting Our Children’s Hearts With Beauty and Color

Cay at Cajun Cottage had a good post about the Advanced Child trend. She also linked to some other interesting posts on the subject, but they were more about books that are "reading level suitable" but not "maturity level suitable" for kids . I have some thoughts about that issue, but I'm not sure if it's one of the posts I really need to write. I am sure it's been written well by someone else.

But I like what Cay says:

Goodness! isn't life complicated enough without funneling books down their neural tube? Let's lighten up a bit. Let's paint our children's hearts with beauty and color. This isn't an argument for dumbing down or building up. It's an argument for touching our children's hearts with the first things that came out of our mouths and into their ears...Words!

She goes on to talk about how she will be sharing Patricia Pollaco and Jan Brett and eggnog with her children today, not pushing them into reading Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice; there are years ahead for that. "Pushing" is the operative word here, of course; if one of her children picked up Jane Austen, or if Cay wanted to invite a child to read it with her, that would be a different matter. But it wouldn't be about "reading levels" or "advancing" – it would be about an invitation to share a great book.

Ruth Beechick said something I read many many years ago, about how it wasn't necessary to be always "challenging" your kids in reading. Did your kid check a book out of the library and read a couple of chapters and then drop it? Why force him or her to finish it? Do you force yourself to read every single book you start? Maybe it would be a richer experience for the child some other time. Is your child reading at a supposed 5^th grade level at age 6? For one thing, this is not that uncommon. Really, it's not. It does not mean super-geniuis, any more than heaving a Nerf Ball across the room at 9 months means you have the next Joe Montana. Those things tend to even out over time. Some plants bloom quickly, and others bloom over time. The quality is not measured by the quickness. But even supposing you have a genius on your hands, why would she necessarily then want to read only books from Sonlight's Year 5 at age six? Why ought she to have to? There are so many wonderful books out there suited for 6 year old – not dumbed down, but not accelerated either – with creative, poetic use of language, first rate illustrations and perceptive understanding of life's truths.

Ruth Beechick recommended a variety – easier books to let the child consolidate his skills and for age-level enjoyment and understanding; more difficult books for challenge and growth. Most kids naturally gravitate towards a mixture if this is encouraged. My kids went from The Hobbit and Beowulf to Frog and Toad and Peter Cottontail and back again. The key here is no twaddle. The picture books should be ones that a grown-up could find delight in reading, as CS Lewis said. As Cay says, they should be books that paint hearts with beauty and touch them with words.

Reading levels aren't really the key. I know kids who weren't really reading at age 10, who could read the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, with understanding and joy, at age 14. I know kids who were reading bits of Romeo and Juliet and the Hobbit at age six, who also had a heart of joy and wonder for Hans Christian Andersen and Beatrix Potter, and needed time and space to develop a relationship with those things.

James Taylor said that everyone should read the Pooh books. If you missed them when you were six or seven, you should read them at nineteen or forty. They are not "accelerated" – they live outside of sequence at all, in eternity. That is almost the point. Acceleration implies sequence, doesn't it? So does "advancement". They are transitive terms, leaving in question the end goal: advancement towards what? If it is towards "superior mental function" then it is the wrong goal. Children and books and their relationship shouldn't be locked into sequence like tracks in the service of academic superiority; books – particularly speaking of literature, here-- should open doors to eternity. This is a greater thing. You can be advanced and accelerated towards nothing; it happens to kids all the time. On the other hand, you can be a "bear of very little brain" and participate in eternity.

I always feel a bit sad when I walk into the local school's resource room, where Aidan has his speech therapy. The room is stacked with piles of books. … sets all of the same books. You might see a pile of Berlioz the Bear, along with a stack of The Black Cauldron. A few feet away is Tom Sawyer and on the other side is Ghost Town at Sundown by Mary Pope Osborne. When I was a child I would have thought this was a treasure trove, except.. except.. it is not so much a trove as a warehouse. And what they do with these stacks is horrible. I have a hard time writing it, because it seems so well intentioned and yet so misguided. They put them on a list with grade levels and point systems. A school kid reads one of them. Then he takes a multiple choice test to ensure that he has really read them. Then, if she passes the test, she is eligible to pick little prizes according to how many points the book is "worth". Oh, my. I feel so sad for these stacks of paperbacks stuck in the resource room. Just the fact that they are in these stacks seems to dehumanize them, relativize them, temporalize them. This is not eternity; it is like exile, or like exploitation. I feel so sorry for the kids who encounter Lloyd Alexander and Jan Brett in a context of "reading levels" and "points" for "prizes" and stacks of paperbacks just sitting there, in a side room. Surely that kid has not at all the same experience as a child who hears them while cuddled in the arms of a parent, or picks them up while browsing quietly through a home library on a snowy afternoon.

Now such is the power of a child's heart and mind, and the power of a great book, that even this conclave of prisoners can have wonderful results, I do not doubt. One good thing about this warehouse of books is that I can see a little child browsing the warehouse, choosing a book, passing the test, even acquiring the cheap prize, and in spite of all these hurdles still connecting with a book in a real, life-changing way. Because the human spirit, of authors and children, is bigger and better than all those hurdles are small and mean. But it's not the best way. And using books as fodder for "acceleration" is not the best way, any more than it would be a good thing to shovel books into the fuel compartment of a new kind of high powered locomotive. Travelers' guides to your journey ought not to be used as your fuel.

economics and more

I tried to read this a couple of years ago. Maybe it will go better if I follow along with others this time.

Liam started talking to me about Spinoza and Hobbes the other day. At his college this year they are talking about government and rights and responsibilities of rulers. If you go here and scroll down to the junior year you can see some of the books on his course list. This is really interesting stuff. I totally missed Government in high school because I was getting a British O-Level education in Switzerland at the time. My history teacher Mr Schumann was a first rate teacher and I still remember all kinds of things I learned about the 20th century, but nothing much about civics or political theory. It's one of those areas where I wish I could fit an extra 3-4 hours in the day because in one way, it's not necessary to wade through all the erroneous theories of the Enlightenment but in another way it would probably explain a lot that's puzzling about the way the world looks today. I know Charlotte Mason was quite well-read in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophers and knowing more about those would help me understand her writings better too.

Sigh... anyway, just for starters, I think I'll try to keep up with the Economics in One Lesson schedule. We'll see. Even though I didn't finish the book the first time through, I well remember his premise about watching out for the unintended secondary consequences. I talk to my kids about that quite a bit. The principle applies to schooling and medical interventions and therapeutic interventions like HeadStart, and to parenting as well.

I am just finishing reading Socrates meets Marx by Peter Kreeft. It is a cute series, if you want a readable way to introduce major schools of thought to a highschooler. I am not saying "cute" in a derogatory way, either -- after all, cute used to mean "acute" even up past the turn of the 19th century -- ask my daughter, who is presently reading the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. The Peter Kreeft "Socrates" (I've also read The Unaborted Socrates and The Best Things in Life) books are "acute" in bits, and amusing in others, and sometimes a teeny bit hokey, because after all, putting words in the mouth of Socrates and Marx and Descartes and various others is no easy task. I know I couldn't do it.

Prayer of St Benedict

Prayer for the Gifts to Seek God and Live in Him


Father,

In your goodness grant me the intellect to comprehend you, the perception to discern you, and the reason to appreciate you.

In your kindness endow me with the diligence to look for you, the wisdom to discover you, and the spirit to apprehend you.

In your graciousness bestow on me a heart to contemplate you, ears to hear you, eyes to see you, and a tongue to speak of you.

In your mercy confer on me a conversation pleasing to you, the patience to wait for you, and the perseverance to long for you.

Grant me a perfect end - your holy presence. Amen.

Our Lord Cherishes Simplicity

Simplicity in Love
and St Francis de Sales on Simplicity
from my daughter's blog.

Wordless Wednesday

trying for specifics

That last post was so vague that I don't know if it clarified anything at all. So I decided to pick up the Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion to look at; I remembered it being much more specific and practical, so I thought perhaps I could use that as a springboard for writing out some more practical thoughts on the matter.

I just read the first article, called Off the Conveyer Belt, by Diane Jeppson who has four daughters. The idea of the "conveyer belt" is of course parallel to unschooling's concept of "assembly line" education. JT Gatto is a vehement critic of the factory-driven model of education, as well.

Here then is a list of the things she mentions that she has found to work towards an individualized education designed for excellence. This are things that we tend to do around here as well:

• Careful record-keeping (either formal or journalling -- but it's been a pattern of mine to record extensively)
  
• Reading plenty of classics yourself (the parents) -- seek recommendations
• Discuss the books --take them seriously.
  
• Have family readings and conversations.
• Design the childrens' academics to support their reading, understanding and appreciation of the classics.
  

Some other ideas she mentions that we don't do as much in this family, at least not exactly the way she describes, but that might be helpful for some:

• When a child decides to study a topic, help him plan objectives, and then design a tutoring system to help him reach his goals. In some cases the mother might be the best tutor; in other cases, the father; in other cases, siblings or people outside the home. (This sounds a bit like the community-based style of education that is described in As the Skylark Sings. (We do this, I suppose, but usually much less formally. We are not people who usually get inspired by logistics, so we do it more the rabbit-trailing, circle and then zone in type method).

• Plan discussion groups with likeminded families. I would like to do this sometime. I always like reading about Love2Learn Family's activities in this area. In the meantime, we have a few friends who love to talk about the same books and movies that we do, and we also rely on the internet to exchange and hear thoughts on the Great Ideas.

• Make room for leadership opportunities. I suppose it is the language that defeats me here. Diane Jeppson mentions craft fairs, running seminars, and things like that for leadership. The idea is to let the kids practice adult life skills while they are still in the nest. I guess we do some of that too, but I usually don't think of it so much as "leadership opportunities" -- more of just expanding, sharing, developing interests and gifts.

Even though Diane Jeppson does use that type of more formal language, she says that in practice she usually tries to keep it as organic as possible. For example, she expanded a simple morning devotion time into a more full-blown reading, discussion and research hour, but she took care not to impose it upon the kids like a ton of bricks, but rather to let it develop more naturally.

My children don't mind being assigned things, usually, but they do seem to heartily resist being molded. I think it runs in the Celtic temperament they get from both sides of the family. So some of the most "relaxed, fun" type of curricula are often the ones they hate most heartily, and some of the more structured ones actually appeal to them more.

Maureen at Trinity Prep School has pulled together some Thomas Jefferson Education carnivals. I think I will try to read through some of them this vacation.

But when I was writing my last post I felt convicted about spending too much time theorizing and not enough time just being around my kids. So that's step one, definitely; just being there!

Clare is baking a cake and listening to Anna and the King of Siam. Paddy and Liam just came in from a walk outdoors in the snow (Liam with photos to show); Sean has been timing his football 40's. And Aidan is trying to talk Kevin into cutting down a Christmas tree!

How to Classically Unschool -- I Wish :)

I was looking up "Classical Unschooling" on Google. Someone asked me about how we do it and of course! my first response is to go research, not just say how we do it like anyone else would.

I see that my blog comes up third on the search, following Melissa and David. Here's also a post by Nose in a Book and one by Nerd Family.... .all about classical unschooling or the balance between the two in some form.

That doesn't seem to help me with "how I do it". : ). Sure, I could write out a typical day; in fact you can see a bunch of them over at Schola et Studium. It would look like a form of Charlotte Mason, which it is. It would probably look like way too many "requires" for most unschoolers, and way too much freedom for many classical types. Often it's provisional -- it's not exactly what I would want.

My ideal is that:

1. I act as a mentor, coach, guide to help the kids develop their talents and interests.

2. They learn from me and go further than I can take them.

3. They end up capable of living a good, meaningful life and being able to support themselves and reflect on their choices and on the society around them, and change what is theirs to change.

On a given day this is not what is happening on the surface. Most often, it's hidden underneath, at best, with glints of the real thing occasionally. As time goes on, though, more of the real value comes through. It's like prospecting, or fishing (I guess I am an Alaskan!)

Maybe a better approach is to list what I try to keep in mind as I plan:

• The student is the primary agent in learning; teaching is a secondary role, and often works best informally rather than formally.
• Inspiration is probably the key to any kind of "teaching" that takes place. "Requirements" are contingent to that. In other words, requirements can provide a sort of map, but they are poor as pilots.
  
• The human being has a natural, driving desire to know. All the great educational methods have been based on an understanding of that truth. You can foster, support, develop that desire or you can make war on it. ..."despise, hinder, offend" it. Obviously, it's better to foster it.
• Plan for strewing -- an unschooling idea that has great value in any kind of family life. Also, "planting seeds" or "preparing a banquet" -- both something like strewing. Basically, giving the child lots of opportunities to learn, while avoiding the extremes of force-feeding or overstimulating and scattering.
• Non Multa sed Multum -- not many, but much -- seems to be opposed to the strewing and planting and banquet ideas, but isn't. It reminds me to keep my priorities in order. Reminds me that scattering trivialities that distract the child is not the same as planting seeds that flower and bear fruit.
• As for what the priorities are: they are (1) "tools" (the kind of learning that helps you do more learning on your own) and hmm, I guess I don't really have a word for it -- but (2) "elements" -- the groundwork for the subjects -- the primary principles. So for literature the primary elements are enjoying lots of good books, for science it is respect for and observation of nature, for history -- well, that is a bit like literature actually, and I think the old tradition was to put them together as "humanities" -- wisdom acquired from past events and reflections upon those events. Composition -- comes from expresssion, verbal and written. And so on.

In practice, you see me trying all sorts of things based on this. I look for "consent of the will" -- consent is a nice term that for me means more than passive compliance -- it means an effort combining heart, will and mind.

Obviously you will usually only see bits and pieces of this on a typical day in the homeschool. Say, my 14 year old wakes up and comes downstairs immediately to do his Greek and Vocabulary. This is a nice example of his will being brought to bear on his work. Some of his mind and heart is involved, but not all. He would probably prefer to be doing something else, but he has internalized that this work is important and part of his daily duties.

Again, you see a child who loves to read fantasy books. His motivation is primarily of the heart and imagination. He obviously makes a willed decision to sit and read instead of kick his heels, and he is using his mind to understand. So there's a combination. But he is primarily directed by "delight".

In actual practice, I sit down and look at my kids and look at what I think is important in education. Then I try to get the two together.

1. If a child has an interest in something or a gift, I try to provide space and support.
2. If I am presenting something that simply is not working. I try to figure out what is wrong. Is it a matter of will, heart or mind? Often an educator will tend to focus on just one of these and treat every difficulty as a failure of that particular area.
3. For all the middle ground things --the things that I am introducing but the kids are all right with -- I am tweaking and kitbashing. I am trying to make it work a bit better and also trying to just continue with the follow through (my tendency is quick discouragement and lack of persistence).

My efforts probably go about 50 percent towards thr third scenario; 20-30 percent towards the first; and I try to keep "really not working" to about 10 percent or less. The missing 10-20 percent is my simple incompetence or just personal sloughing-off. Actually it probably measures higher than that. I would like the first to be higher than 30% -- that is I would like to be better at working interactively and responsively with the childrens' own interests and talents. That is why I admire unschoolers. I'm happy with the 50 percent for #3 but would like to be better, more skillful, at it. This is where my interest in Method comes in. I would of course like to keep my sloughing-off to almost zero. But that made me think of a fourth category.

#4 Mother Culture (Charlotte Mason term) -- what Stephen Covey calls "sharpening the saw". Thomas Jefferson Education has a word for it too, but I forget what it is. My own lifetime learning. This probably ideally should infuse ALL the other areas but certainly needs a bit of its own space as well. It is not at all the same thing as sloughing-off, though for me they can overlap. I love to study and so I can use that as an excuse for ignoring everything else.

I would like to think this might be helpful, sigh -- but it is a mess, and my five year old is "really really really really hungry". I need to teach Algebra before it gets too late in the day. Anyway, I'm going to post it so my depressed post stops heading my blog ;-). So here goes.

The Holy Ghost, Emblazoned in Ice

It won't last. But right now, the house is grey, the kids are all still asleep, there is a fire going in the wood stove, and the big sister, at least, of all ice storms is going on outside in our corner of the California Sierra mountains. It is remarkably cozy here, seeing the elements but protected from them. I have my coffee next to me, and upstairs my husband is getting the day started in his home office.

The calm is nice and I am grateful for it. I did not sleep well last night.

I don't know if anyone else has the kind of nightmare I do. I don't dream about monsters or aliens or murderers like my kids do. I wake up visualizing the future, in the most vivid detail, with the bleakest outcomes imaginable. The air of tragedy seeps backwards so my whole life seems like a futile pageant of errors and failed impulses towards good, like a novel by Thomas Hardy. This time I woke up trembling and chilled and could not sleep again for hours.

I am not sure how it's best to cope with this; presently, I immerse myself in prayer and make mental notes about the things that loom the largest, to consider them in the morning. Usually by morning the significance of them is gone, which is disturbing in itself because it leads me to wonder if those 3 am vigils are the only time I'm seeing clearly. Like the boy in the Sixth Sense, I see ghosts, but only sometimes, at night. Aren't they still there the rest of the time, when I don't see them? Aren't they waiting for my help?

I have a lot to be thankful for, a lot that is going right, but like everyone else I have a lot of things to be deeply worried about as well. Life is not easy nowadays; we all have our issues to deal with, don't we? And my natural sensibility is more Greek than Roman -- if you notice, the Roman sensibilities were informed by confidence in their ability and natural virtue, and then informed by nostalgia for their past glory days. The Greek outlook was more tragic -- when everything seems to be going the best, that's when fate or the gods are most likely to be steering you towards a giant crash where the seeds of destruction are within you and your best intentions and all your human gifts and capacities aren't enough to forestall it.

On top of that basic melancholy, a Christian conversion has been happily imposed (infused?), so I have a Flannery O'Connor type conviction that however bad it may look -- and sometimes it looks pretty bad -- that is not the end of the story. One's own inadequacy is not all one has to rely on. Redemption is wrested from the jaws of futility; the Holy Ghost descends.

The old life in him was exhausted. He awaited the coming of new. It was then that he felt the beginning of a chill, a chill so peculiar, so light, that it was like a warm ripple across the deeper sea of cold. His breath came short. The fierce bird which through the years of his childhood and the days of his illness had been poised over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion. Asbury blanched and the last film of illusion was torn as if by a whirlwind from his eyes. He saw that for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend.

Goethe says:

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred….unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

This is what I believe with my will, but when the ice storm enters my psyche, it's difficult sometimes to stir myself to move in the first place. Won't it be futile? Will I not do more harm than good?

Pope Benedict responds:

In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing): so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13)

Later in the encyclical:

We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it. It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.

Ah well! I think it is time to hug Aidan, who is now awake and telling me about his toy train "going to college" to pick up Liam. Liam is here from college, and I can go make a hot breakfast so that when the other kids wake up it will be to good food and warmth. Later I will clean the bathroom, and vacuum the rug. That may not be the solution to all the "sorrows of the world" but it does seem to help clear away some of the frozen, "waiting for calamity" feeling. I will try to help those poor ghosts through loving action.

Freedom is Always New

I am still thinking about The Village, which I watched Friday night with my older children. CS Lewis said that one ought to have read a poem at least three times before making a judgment, and I would think that applies somewhat to cinema as well, so I don't want to make an evaluation too soon. Besides, you probably have read a lot of those already. Many critics don't seem to have liked it, and I can see why. One, their own slightly pagan literary sensibilities tell them that anyone who has been touted fervently needs some kind of "fall" to balance out the picture. Being in the position of obligation to churn out movie reviews constantly, the "fall" of Shyamalan provides them with a glib readymade template. Two, the movie depicts an 18th century style village hidden from the 20th century world, which offends their sense of realism. Three, it doesn't tie up very neatly, so you can't say "the theme is...." or pull an allegorical message from it. There are a lot of unresolved notes; for that reason, it seemed to evoke meaning rather than encapsulate it.

The dialogue that seems to be a key part to the theme is frustrating because it has a slightly trite ring to it (there, I am evaluating even when I said I would not). The actual scenes, the colors and details, and the positioning of the characters and how they are filmed, even the musical score and sound effects, seem to have more poetic depth to them than the words. But here are the words that seem to sum up the way the movie seems to change direction (whether it actually changes course or just adds new light that retrospects towards the beginning -- a recurrent device in Shyamalan's movies --- I haven't figured out yet).

Anyway, here is the dialogue that seems to be the pivot:

---Who do you think will continue this place, this life? Do you plan to live forever? It is in them that our future lies, it is in Ivy and Lucius that this way of life will continue. Yes I have risked, I hope I am always able to risk everything for the just and right cause. If we did not make this decision, we could never again call ourselves innocent, and that in the end is what we have protected here, innocence! That I'm not ready to give up.
---Let her go. If it ends, it ends. We can move towards hope, that's what's beautiful about this place. We cannot run from heartache. My brother was slain in the towns, the rest of my family died here. Heartache is a part of life, we know that now. Ivy is running toward hope, let her run. If this place is worthy, she'll be successful in her quest.
---How could you have sent her. She is blind.
---She is more capable than most in this village. And she is led by love. The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.

This evoked for me the Pope's words in Spe Salvi:

Let us ask once again: what may we hope? And what may we not hope? First of all, we must acknowledge that incremental progress is possible only in the material sphere. Here, amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature.

Yet in the field of ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man's freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew. These decisions can never simply be made for us in advance by others—if that were the case, we would no longer be free. Freedom presupposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning.

Naturally, new generations can build on the knowledge and experience of those who went before, and they can draw upon the moral treasury of the whole of humanity. But they can also reject it, because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions. The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it.

If the theme in The Village ties together in some way, it seems to me it would be something along these lines. Before the time frame of the movie, the elders have made a radical decision to withdraw from the world, in light of their horrific experiences with human evil. The "monsters" are their device for making this horror both vivid and vague, to protect their children and provide them a haven.

At this turning point in the movie, where they allow Ivy to go on her quest, to leave the haven, they are deciding to turn towards the future in a new way; to hand over the active role to the next generation. In order to preserve what is valuable to them -- the essence of its value -- they must be willing to accept the possibility of change, even disruption, of its outward form. In some real way, otherwise, they will "become the monsters" themselves.

Cardinal Newman said (quoted here by then-Cardinal Ratzinger) that "to live is to change". In the context of the essay he wrote, it goes like this:

But whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse with the world around, such a risk must be encountered if a great idea is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. .... It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. .... old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change....

So something like that would be my reading. I still haven't figured out if it coheres throughout The Village, which certainly has several puzzling and thought-provoking elements that aren't quite contained in this idea. My kids and I had fun discussing these yesterday, and will probably continue to ponder more upon it in the future.

Moving Towards the Holidays

Liam arrived home on Friday evening, via Amtrak. Aidan was so excited about the arrival of the train, complete with ghostly hoots, at the bitterly cold downtown station, that he started jumping up and down shouting “Choo! Choo! Choo!” This behavior makes me laugh, though I try to shush him gently. Kevin captured it all on film; his motive was to film the Amtrak for the sake of future train modelling projects. When we are obsessed in this household, we are obsessed.

Yesterday Liam woke up and right after eating hash browns and an omelette with cheese and onions, started making a new wooden sword. A couple of years back my kids found a whole bunch of wooden stakes discarded from a construction site (we have many, many construction sites in our “vacation” spot of the Sierras). As a consequence, many of our pivotal life moments are marked with a new sword. He spent most of the day with my scroll saw, his eyes sheathed in protective goggles and his hands in work gloves.

Then we all conversed about our plans for the Story Society during this vacation. Paddy and Aidan followed Liam around and happily tried to engage him in conversation; they wanted to eat everything he ate (quesadillas and chili and hot links for lunch — what a comfort-food day!)

We went to Mass in the afternoon and I made chicken patties for dinner, and we had ice cream for dessert, completing the slow-death-by-cholesterol trend.

Clare played him You-Tube clips from the Scarlet Pimpernel. Clare wanted Liam and me to see The Village, so we watched that while Paddy made Bionicle cartoons on my computer (he has a bitmap kit and is very good at putting together components and even typing dialogue with a bit of help).

The Village is an interesting film. It stays away from making a point; whether intentionally or by accident. I suppose the theme could be said to be, in the words of a main character, “The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.” But if that were the theme, it only really works for the second half of the production; only in a very implicit way did it carry forward to the beginning part. To me, the endeavour worked better when thought of as a collection of interesting ideas raised, not answered. There were several significantly unsatisfying parts, but it was visually beautiful and well-executed enough (to me) to work as a sort of “lived experience”. One of the ways the “love” theme did carry forward was the care taken with most of the characters. There were a lot of characters, and the length of the movie made it impossible to deal with more than a few in depth. But to me there was a sense that they did have complex, rounded out backgrounds and personalities (the “villain” of the piece was the most bothersome one and the part of the whole thing that I was least happy with).

Authority and Autonomy

From Charlotte Mason's Parent and Children, more on that process of moving towards independence that I was talking about here:

Again, the authority of parents, though the deference it begets remains to grace the relations of parents and child, is itself a provisional function, and is only successful as it encourages the autonomy, if we may call it so, of the child. A single decision made by the parents which the child is, or should be, capable of making for itself, is an encroachment on the rights of the child, and a transgression on the part of the parents......

Authority has an equivocal meaning nowadays, of course, as it did in CM's time. This is probably why she discusses it in such depth in her books. It is something inherent in the role of parent that is for the benefit of the child. It is NOT a merit badge, proclaiming that the parents are superior to the children. As CM points out, how could that be when in many ways our task as adults is to "become like little children?"

It is NOT meant to be something the child is meant to "knuckle under" to; in other words, it's not a WMD in the parent/child struggle for power. Yikes! Of course, the immature child may sometimes see it that way, but if the parent uses it in that manner, it usually works against authority rather than for it.

Rather, it is the means by which the child is "brought up" (CM used that homely Anglo-Saxon term, she said, to imply both the parental effort involved AND the direction in which the efforts ought to go) to be able to take over the reins for himself. Authority does not mean a right to exploit someone or jerk them this way and that, but the duty to nourish someone else's freedom and help them to become worthy of it.

The word "autonomy", too, is often misused in her time and ours, which is probably why she put it in italics with a qualifier. Autonomy is owed to the individual in the sense that a human being must never be used for the purposes of someone else. But autonomy is not anarchy; it is what the Pope called "freedom for excellence". And it exists in relation to other people; it is not simple individualism.

I was trying to write out a bit more, but it's surprisingly difficult. I'll probably have to try to approach it a different way some other time.

The Value of Rereading

I'm still looking for that quote by CS Lewis -- I can almost write it out by memory, but I can't seem to find a way to Google it so it comes up, and I don't remember which of Lewis's essays it was in. So frustrating! Anyway, the way I reconstruct it from memory has it that CS Lewis thought a book that was worth reading once was worth reading many times. He talked about pulling great books down from his shelf and browsing through them, revisiting them as if conversing with an old friend.

On a similar line, I know he says, in regard to living books:

"it certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then"

found on Into the Wardrobe

I also found a couple of posts on Iambic Admonit:

On Reading and Rereading
one of the comments by one of the IA blog contributors said this:

The benefits of rereading are many. C.S. Lewis said something along the lines of this: when you buy a book you're actually buying six or seven books, because you can reread it every decade, and you'll be a different person each time, so the book will say something new to you.

(Yep, that's kind of how I remember it, but I still wish I could find where he said it)

A Year of Rereading

(this is a sort of liturgical year of rereading -- great idea! an obvious one is Dickens Christmas Carol and also O Henry's The Gift of the Magi; I always tend to read Dickens during the Christmas break, and for years and years I would read Flannery O'Connor during Lent)

Charlotte Mason of course, said that one reading ought to suffice, and if more than one reading was allowed, it would not develop the faculty of attention. More on this some other time. But I don't think it contradicts Lewis entirely. She was talking in the context of school readings. I remember reading that she herself reread the Walter Scott books every year so this kind of revisiting is probably the fruit she hoped for in the child educated by her methods -- that favorite, high quality books should be companions throughout life. But as a child dealing with new books one should acquire the habit of attention, and not read in a desultory way.