Freedom and Giving

The subject of freedom and self-donation has been coming up in my life recently, so I want to link to this article at the First Things site that someone sent to the Unschooling Catholics list. The Freedom of Heaven and the Freedom of Hell. A quote:

the community of the blessed saints, for whom freedom means the grace-filled incapacity to will anything but the good for themselves and for one another. Thomas Aquinas steps forth from the constellation of the wise to express this freedom as the now utterly natural and supernatural virtue of love.

Aquinas says to Dante (in the Divine Comedy)

When the radiance
of the Lord’s grace, which lights the flames of true
love and by love still grows in eminence,
With such multiplication shines in you
it leads you up these stairs no man may take
descending, without climbing up anew,
He who’d deny his flask of wine to slake
your thirst would not be free, would have such power
as rivers not returning to the sea!

Divine Mercy Novena starts today

Since I almost always forget, I was grateful to Maria for the reminder.

The most beautiful credo is that which comes from your lips in darkness, in sacrifice, in pain, in supreme effort of an unbending will for good. It is this which like a strong of lightening penetrates the darkness of the soul; it is this which in a flash of the tempest lifts you and leads you to God.

-Bl. Padre Pio

When you feel the assaults of passion and anger, then is the time to be silent as Jesus was. Silent in the midst of his ignominies and sufferings.

-St. Paul of the Cross

"Take the holy crucifix in your hands, kiss its wounds with great love, and ask Him to preach you a sermon. Listen to what the thorns, the nails, and that Divine Blood say to you. Oh! What a sermon." --St Paul of the Cross

Fought Out On a Spring Morning

This post Resurrection and Hope at Quiddity reminded me of the chapter of Creed in Slow Motion that I just read to Kieron last week. A couple of excerpts:

The species goes on, but what about the individual? Does Death triumph here, too? Does immortality belong only to the race, or can the individual human being look forward, somehow, to immortality?

That issue, too, was fought out on a spring morning. There's a fascinating verse of St. Matthew, just after his description of how St. Joseph of Arimathea took our Lord's body and buried it. "But there were two who sat on opposite the tomb, Mary Magdalen and the other Mary with her." They cannot drag themselves away, spectators of the great world conflict between life and death, which has now reached its final round. If nothing happens on Easter Morning, then it is all over; there is no hope left for human hearts. Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando, says the Easter sequence; "Life and Death met in wondrous combat". And the darkness fell, and the sabbath dawned; and you were not allowed to go out and look at the tomb on the sabbath. But as soon as the grey twilight of Sunday morning came, Mary Magdalen and the other Mary were there, with their spices. And they looked, to find the stone rolled away, and the soldiers asleep, and the tomb empty.

and this following part reminded Brendan and Clare and me of some of the things Chesterton said; not surprising, since Ronald Knox was led to the Catholic Church by Chesterton and gave his requiem mass:

But at the root of it all. you see, baptism has made a permanent difference: we are no longer what we were. The devil had a natural claim over us, so to speak, until the day when we were christened; now he hasn't, now it is Christ who has the natural claim over us. Life has triumphed over death in our souls. Grace has been implanted in us, a principle of supernatural life, a seed that sprang from our Lord's tomb. That garden of the Resurrection was the nursery garden of the whole Church. And that's why we must never allow ourselves to grow despondent over our sins, even when we find ourselves falling into them again and again; there's something in us stronger than sin, Divine grace, which is always thrusting up like a plant rooted in our souls, always claiming us for itself. There is no autumn in your soul; as long as you believe in Jesus Christ and in what his Resurrection has done for you, it is always spring.

And just as Christ, by rising again, has planted this irresistible principle of victory in your soul and mine, so by his rising again he has planted an irresistible principle of victory in his Church. Again and again, when you read the history of the Church, you will come across periods when it looks as if the whole thing was no use, and there was nothing for her but to chuck up the sponge; the world keeps on persecuting her, and it seems bound to get her down. You see it in the Dark Ages, when the barbarians invaded Europe; you see it at the time of the Reformation, when half of Europe was torn away from her influence; you see it at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, when it looked for a moment as if religion had ceased to count. You will live your life, maybe, in equally troubled times, when it will look as if everything we Catholics care for were going under. But the Church is the Church of the Risen Christ, and till the end of time every death she undergoes will be the prelude to a resurrection.

Classical Redivivus

Some interesting (for me) threads going on at Real Learning (which is just about to close for Holy Week):

• Let's Talk about Memorization!
• Philosophizing about Classical Education
• Purpose of Education

I love this time of year -- I love to ponder what we're doing in the homeschool and start figuring out what next year will look like.

I found this interview with Father Fessio and wanted to excerpt this part about homeschooling:

Q: It's evident that a passion of yours is education through your involvement with Ave Maria, the work you began and still do with Ignatius Press, and your involvement with NAPCIS. Share with our readers what you think the current state of Catholic education today is and why you feel so many parents are opting to home school their children?

A: Yes. Let me limit myself to the United States and certain features of the United States. For many years, I have received letters and phone calls from parents who are in tremendous grief because their children have lost their faith going to Catholic schools. The problem with the catechetics and academics was basically denied by those in authority and lay people were told that they were working on it- don't worry things will get better. But when your kids are growing up, you don't have time. You need to have a Catholic education now.

So, as a result of that, many Catholic parents began to home school. Primarily because they could no longer entrust their kids to the parochial schools. Once they started doing that however, many of them discovered that it's a better form of education if you can do it. So, now I know many Catholic home school parents, who even if they had a great Catholic school right across the street, would still home school. Right here at Ave Maria, we have a wonderful grammar and prep school - Ave Maria Grammar andPrep- with some of the Dominican sisters from Ann Arbor who are teaching there, a wonderful headmaster, excellent faculty and great kids. But there are many families that live literally a block or two from the school, and who home school- it's not that they think the school isn't a good school, they just think home schooling is a better education for their kids.

Q: Would you agree with them?

A: I would agree that as a general principle that home schooling is superior to schooling in a more structured context of a classroom. But, that doesn't mean it's for everybody at all times and at all grades. I do think it's better. Here at University, half of our students are home schooled. Through high school, about 25% are home schooled.

You find, in general, even though the other students are good too, a greater love of learning, willingness to study on their own, receptivity- and in addition, incredible talent. A number of our students can play the piano, or the violin, or can act, or sing, and do it well. It's astounding to me. I've never seen such a concentration of talent, and a lot of it is because they have large families that home school and can learn these things. So no one can claim now that there's no opportunity to educate their kids in a Catholic way. They can always home school.

Then there are these new family schools, many members of NAPCIS as you mentioned- there's more than a hundred of them around the country. These are family-operated, small, Catholic schools, which are loyal to the Tradition of the Church and to a classical education. And as far as universities go, there are 10 or 12 spread across the country, so I think you can get a good education. I think Ave Maria is one of the best- I really love the kids here as well as the faculty and the curriculum, but there are other good places too.

Q: In terms of a classical education, there are those who would argue that the idea of a classical education would actually include the dynamic of having peers among you in the learning environment, simply in regards to the idea that the original idea of school being leisure among friends, and granted you can get that in the home element as well…

A: What's classical about that? Do they have to be the same age? The idea of schools, is as they say in French a “pis aller” a second best type of thing. What were the best types of education in medieval and post-medieval times? It was with the nobility in the castles. How? With the tutors for the children of the noble families. They didn't go to some school. And then, when you started with the cathedral schools and in the monastaries, you would go in with the monks. You would have young men join the monastery as clerics, lower clerics, when they were 7 or 8 years old.

I think schools have a value, but I think They are not as good as the kind of care and attention you can get in a home schooling environment. I've seen it happen- in a family of four kids, the oldest boy who was very analytical and very argumentative did a lot of reading and a lot of essays on different topics; but his brother, a couple of years younger, was very intuitive and artistic. So, he did more poetry, literature, art and that sort of thing. And by doing that he also learned the other skills he needed, but learned by doing the things that he loved.

There's a fellow that helps do some work for us in our retreat house north of San Francisco. When he and his fiance were getting ready to get married, he had about a fourth or fifth grade reading level. But, he loved to hunt, so his fiancee’s mother got him three subscriptions to some hunting magazines and suddenly his reading level zoomed up because he finally found something he wanted to read. That's how home schooling works.You take a look at your kid and say, "He's interested in WWII" so there's an entrée. You learn to read better and do research. Then you might want to go on to other things, like geography or weather. Who knows what it might be. I think home schooling is a great sign of hope in this country, and the small Catholic schools as well, and as a result of that, the parochial schools and Catholic schools are going through a renewal process. We also have younger bishops now who are more traditional and younger priests who are more traditional. I do see a lot of movement in the right direction.

"strive above all else to keep a calm, restful spirit"

I was looking for something else and found this quote by St Francis de Sales. It seemed to relate to some of what I've been going through as I deal with this Lenten confrontation of my inadequacies:

Anxiety of mind is not so much an abstract temptation, as the source whence various temptations arise. Sadness, when defined, is the mental grief we feel because of our involuntary ailments;--whether the evil be exterior, such as poverty, sickness or contempt; or interior, such as ignorance, dryness, depression or temptation. Directly that the soul is conscious of some such trouble, it is downcast, and so trouble sets in. Then we at once begin to try to get rid of it, and find means to shake it off; and so far rightly enough, for it is natural to us all to desire good, and shun that which we hold to be evil.

If any one strives to be delivered from his troubles out of love of God, he will strive patiently, gently, humbly and calmly, looking for deliverance rather to God's Goodness and Providence than to his own industry or efforts; but if self-love is the prevailing object he will grow hot and eager in seeking relief, as though all depended more upon himself than upon God. I do not say that the person thinks so, but he acts eagerly as though he did think it. Then if he does not find what he wants at once, he becomes exceedingly impatient and troubled, which does not mend matters, but on the contrary makes them worse, and so he gets into an unreasonable state of anxiety and distress, till he begins to fancy that there is no cure for his trouble. Thus you see how a disturbance, which was right at the outset, begets anxiety, and anxiety goes on into an excessive distress, which is exceedingly dangerous.

This unresting anxiety is the greatest evil which can happen to the soul, sin only excepted. Just as internal commotions and seditions ruin a commonwealth, and make it incapable of resisting its foreign enemies, so if our heart be disturbed and anxious, it loses power to retain such graces as it has, as well as strength to resist the temptations of the Evil One, who is all the more ready to fish (according to an old proverb) in troubled waters.

Anxiety arises from an unregulated desire to be delivered from any pressing evil, or to obtain some hoped-for good. Nevertheless nothing tends so greatly to enchance the one or retard the other as over-eagerness and anxiety. Birds that are captured in nets and snares become inextricably entangled therein, because they flutter and struggle so much.

Therefore, whensoever you urgently desire to be delivered from any evil, or to attain some good thing, strive above all else to keep a calm, restful spirit,--steady your judgment and will, and then go quietly and easily after your object, taking all fitting means to attain thereto. By easily I do not mean carelessly, but without eagerness, disquietude or anxiety; otherwise, so far from bringing about what you wish, you will hinder it, and add more and more to your perplexities. "My soul is alway in my hand, yet do I not forget Thy Law," David says.

Examine yourself often, at least night and morning, as to whether your soul is "in your hand;" or whether it has been wrested thence by any passionate or anxious emotion. See whether your soul is fully under control, or whether it has not in anywise escaped from beneath your hand, to plunge into some unruly love, hate, envy, lust, fear, vexation or joy. And if it has so strayed, before all else seek it out, and quietly bring it back to the Presence of God, once more placing all your hopes and affections under the direction of His Holy Will.

Just as one who fears to lose some precious possession holds it tight in his hand, so, like King David, we ought to be able to say, "My soul is alway in my hand, and therefore I have not forgotten Thy Law."

Do not allow any wishes to disturb your mind under the pretext of their being trifling and unimportant; for if they gain the day, greater and weightier matters will find your heart more accessible to disturbance.

When you are conscious that you are growing anxious, commend yourself to God, and resolve stedfastly not to take any steps whatever to obtain the result you desire, until your disturbed state of mind is altogether quieted;--unless indeed it should be necessary to do something without delay, in which case you must restrain the rush of inclination, moderating it, as far as possible, so as to act rather from reason than impulse.

On a related note, this Salesian pamphlet (pdf)about dealing with temptation.

Health and Habit of the Soul

Virtue is not self-repression for the sake of duty, but, as Plato says, "a kind of health, and beauty and good habit of the soul" Catholic Encyclopedia

assent to beauty

"yet that kingship was unstained, as all lovely things are unstained by their detestable imitations, since beauty cannot be manifested unless the mind assents. Without that assent, beauty itself must be tyranny... for love is not only the fulfilling but the beginning of the law." Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy.

Ash Wednesday Quote: A Short Road to Perfection

It is the saying of holy men that, if we wish to be perfect, we have nothing more to do than to perform the ordinary duties of the day well. A short road to perfection-short, not because easy, but because pertinent and intelligible. There are no short ways to perfection, but there are sure ones.

I think this is an instruction which may be of great practical use to persons like ourselves. It is easy to have vague ideas what perfection is, which serve well enough to talk about, when we do not intend to aim at it; but as soon as a person really desires and sets about seeking it himself, he is dissatisfied with anything but what is tangible and clear, and constitutes some sort of direction towards the practice of it.

We must bear in mind what is meant by perfection. It does not mean any extraordinary service, anything out of the way, or especially heroic-not all have the opportunity of heroic acts, of sufferings-but it means what the word perfection ordinarily means. By perfect we mean that which has no flaw in it, that which is complete, that which is consistent, that which is sound-we mean the opposite to imperfect. As we know well what imperfection in religious service means, we know by the contrast what is meant by perfection.

He, then, is perfect who does the work of the day perfectly, and we need not go beyond this to seek for perfection. You need not go out of the round of the day.

I insist on this because I think it will simplify our views, and fix our exertions on a definite aim.

If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first-

• Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising;
• give your first thoughts to God;
• make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament;
• say the Angelus devoutly;
• eat and drink to God’s glory;
• say the Rosary well;
• be recollected;
• keep out bad thoughts;
• make your evening meditation well;
• examine yourself daily;
• go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.

(Cardinal Newman, Meditation and Devotions, p. 285)

I have a ways to go still, but I liked the simplicity of this and its focus on the interior life rather than on glorious achievements.

Drawing Closer to the Heart of Things

This was interesting but mysterious, from Fides et Ratio (speaking of some modern errors of method):

The first goes by the name of eclecticism, by which is meant the approach of those who, in research, teaching and argumentation, even in theology, tend to use individual ideas drawn from different philosophies, without concern for their internal coherence, their place within a system or their historical context. They therefore run the risk of being unable to distinguish the part of truth of a given doctrine from elements of it which may be erroneous or ill-suited to the task at hand.

I do not understand this completely, which is why I think it is so interesting, but I think the operative concern here is:

without concern for their internal coherence, their place within a system or their historical context

It reminded me a bit of what Pope Pius XI says in Divini Illius Magistri in regard to education:

In such a school moreover, the study of the vernacular and of classical literature will do no damage to moral virtue. There the Christian teacher will imitate the bee, which takes the choicest part of the flower and leaves the rest, as St. Basil teaches in his discourse to youths on the study of the classics.Nor will this necessary caution, suggested also by the pagan Quintilian, in any way hinder the Christian teacher from gathering and turning to profit, whatever there is of real worth in the systems and methods of our modern times, mindful of the Apostle's advice: "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good."

Hence in accepting the new, he will not hastily abandon the old, which the experience of centuries has found expedient and profitable. This is particularly true in the teaching of Latin, which in our days is falling more and more into disuse, because of the unreasonable rejection of methods so successfully used by that sane humanism, whose highest development was reached in the schools of the Church. These noble traditions of the past require that the youth committed to Catholic schools be fully instructed in the letters and sciences in accordance with the exigencies of the times. They also demand that the doctrine imparted be deep and solid, especially in sound philosophy, avoiding the muddled superficiality of those "who perhaps would have found the necessary, had they not gone in search of the superfluous."

Neither of the encyclicals are opposed to respecting and understanding and adopting what is good in cultures and philosophies that are separate from a Christian tradition -- but both caution against an uncritical "cafeteria" approach that does not weigh and evaluate. ... that is, as Pope Pius XI says, does not measure "worth" which inevitably is a comparative.

There is more about the philosophy of eclecticism at the Catholic encyclopedia.

Eclecticism errs when it substitutes for personal reflection as the primary source of philosophy a mere fusion of systems, or the history of philosophy for philosophy proper. Eclecticism does not furnish us with the ultimate principles of philosophy or the criterion of certitude. We cannot say that philosophy has reached the highest degree of precision either in its solution or in its presentation of every problem; nor that it knows all that can be known about nature, man, or God. But even if this were the case, the principles of Eclecticism cannot provide us with a firm, complete, and true system of philosophy. ......The eclectic must first separate error from truth before building into a system the results of his discrimination. But this is possible only on the condition of passing a judgment upon each of these systems and therefore of having, quite apart from history, some rational principle as an ultimate criterion. In a word, Eclecticism, considered as a study of the opinions and theories of others in order to find in them some help and enlightenment, has its place in philosophy; it is a part of philosophic method; but as a doctrine it is altogether inadequate.

Note that this is talking about philosophy which is related to education but not identical to it. Still, education does depend upon philosophy since it is intrinsically concerned with what people are capable of, where and how knowledge comes about, and other things of that sort. I consider myself an "eclectic" homeschooler in a way, and I don't think this is a problem IF, as the article cautions, the bits and pieces are evaluated according to general principles.

Charlotte Mason was one educator who often emphasized that any educational practice must be regarded according to how it falls in with true ideas about the human person. It was particularly important in her time when the formal science of psychology was just gaining ground and there were a lot of false ideas in the air. But some of them are still with us, and you can see that education is even less generally successful than it was in her day.

In Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt notes how difficult it is to caution about secondary consequences. It is easy to see that Program A or Intervention B has various good results. It is not so easy to see that A and B might prevent C and D -- perhaps even better things -- from ever coming into being. Possibly the same thing applies in educational matters. The "cafeteria" approach in education can work this way, which is one of the main criticisms of the modern American supermarket-style universities. You can get your academic kicks in all sorts of ways, without ever approaching much more closely to the center of things. It is not that a variety is bad. It is that it can displace something better.

The Ignatian Ratio Studiorum recommended a hierarchy, which has been a useful concept for me. Some subjects are simply closer to the heart of things than others. The Ratio puts the emphasis on the development of language -- competency in comprehension and expression. In the context of a formative education, this competency will not be isolated technical skill but will be closely related to development of virtue. That is, the goal of education is to "think, speak and act well." So the content of the literary education will be excellent, because its purpose is formative. By hearing, reading, thinking upon and expressing good things, one learns to understand and participate in the good. This is an integrated purpose, and is a useful standard by which to evaluate whether or not a method or course is beneficial in the curriculum.

The Ladder

A few quotes I gathered during the summer when I was researching what Charlotte Mason said about "the steps of that ladder of St. Augustine"

We make a ladder for ourselves out of our vices
if we trample the vices themselves under foot.
— St. Augustine

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
All common things, each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.
( Augustine's Ladder, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

'I am, I ought, I can, I will.'––'I am, I ought, I can, I will'––these are the steps of that ladder of St. Augustine, whereby we

"rise on stepping stones
Of our dead selves to higher things."

(Tennyson, In Memoriam)

'I am'––we have the power of knowing ourselves.

"I ought'––we have within us a moral judge, to whom we feel ourselves subject, and who points out and requires of us our duty.

'I can'––we are conscious of power to do that which we perceive we ought to do.

'I will'––we determine to exercise that power with a volition which is in itself a step in the execution of that which we will. Here is a beautiful and perfect chain,

From Home Education by Charlotte Mason

I could wish that men would consider these three things that are in themselves. These three are far other than the Trinity; but I speak of things in which they may exercise and prove themselves, and feel how far other they be.

But the three things I speak of are, To Be, to Know, and to Will. For I Am, and I Know, and I Will; I Am Knowing and Willing; and I Know myself to Be and to Will; and I Will to Be and to Know. In these three, therefore, let him who can see how inseparable a life there is,-even one life, one mind, and one essence; finally, how inseparable is the distinction, and yet a distinction. Surely a man hath it before him; let him look into himself, and see, and tell me.

Augustine Confessions Book XIII

language is meaning incarnate in matter

A Humane Psychology of Education

Physical or chemical energy cannot touch that which we call "meaning," anymore than a shadow can knock down a wall. Meaning is not tangible to matter, because matter and meaning belong to different spheres of reality. Meaning is not extended. Meaning is simply the seal of man's reason. This seal can be pt into sound, and the sound becomes a language; it can be put into arbitrary lines and curves, and they become writing; it can be put into human movements, and those movements become gestures. Language, writing and gestures are, therefore, meaning incarnate in matter. ...

We have seen that matter cannot cope with meaning, but thought can. What all the chemical and physical instruments of the world cannot do, the mind of a little child does, because it can think. . What, then, is the nature of thought; of this mysterious instrument, so simple and yet so strong that it can achieve something which all the machines of the universe, big and small, cannot realize? ....Object and instrument are intimately correlated. Whence we deduce that if the meaning is not material, the organ of meaning, its connatural instrument, cannot be material either. Thought, the human urge after the meaning of things, is, therefore, a spiritual function.

Particularity and Philosophy of Literature -- quotes

Flannery O'Connor

"It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth"

"The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location."

Aristotle

Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.... It clearly follows that the poet or 'maker' should be the maker of plots rather than of verses; since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he imitates are actions.

Tolkien

Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive (compared to the pictorial arts). It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular.

Plutarch

Wherefore those that would give their minds to philosophical studies are not obliged to avoid poetry altogether, but rather to prepare themselves for philosophy by poems, accustoming themselves to search for and embrace that which may profit in that which pleaseth them, and rejecting and discarding that wherein they find nothing of this nature. For this discrimination is the first step to learning.

Jacques Maritain

The poet has realized that he has his own way, which is neither scientific nor philosophical, of knowing the world. Thus the fact of that peculiar kind of knowledge which is poetic knowledge has imposed itself upon philosophical reflection. And it would be no use to try to escape the problem by considering poetry a set of pseudo-statements -- with no meaning -- or a substitute for science intended for feeble-minded people. We must confront in a fair manner the fact of poetic experience and poetic intuition.

..... Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit, it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical experience, because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another...

Lucille Ball:

That's what a writer does... takes the truth and TWISTS it a bit.

(sorry, couldn't resist that last one -- my kids are watching I Love Lucy and Lucy is trying to write a novel to win a 10,000$ prize).

Sunday Memorandums

I thought I was figuring out how to use the scheduling feature of blogger to set publishing ahead of time, but apparently not.... sigh. Ironically, it's a post on Perfection: What it Isn't, that's showing up when it shouldn't be, like a demonstration of its own thesis.... Perfect? NOT!

Since Sunday is usually the day that I work on catching up on my blog read list, here are a few links that I wanted to remember. Sorry, this is long!

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I. The Problem with Reductionism

Here's an interesting article Philosophical Refutation of Reductionism by Peter Kreeft (HT: The Deeps of Time).

It is usually thought today, by both reductionists and transcendentalists alike, that reason (in the modern sense of severely logical reasoning rather than in the older sense of the word "reason" that included intuitive or contemplative wisdom) leads to reductionism, and that the only way to justify transcendentalism is to reduce reason to a secondary or instrumental status and to exalt something else over it -- for instance, intuition, desire, imagination or religious faith. The purpose of this paper is to refute that idea by demonstrating, by strictly logical reasoning, (1) that reductionism is self-contradictory, and (2) that transcendentalism is self-evident once we admit data from our three most valued and distinctively human powers, namely our power to think anything true, to choose anything good, and to appreciate anything beautiful.

You have to read the whole article to see the careful proof but here is the part that clarified something I have been trying to think through.

by science we can know the universe, and combine it with our first premise, that the knowledge of any thing is not one of the parts of that thing, and you get the conclusion that our knowledge of the universe is not part of the universe, but an addition to it, transcending it.

I just recently found an article on a related topic; it's called A Scientist Seeks Mystery, Metaphor, Myth and Magic: Threads Linking Chesterton, Lewis and Tolkien and Even Hawking to the Deep Sinews of Reality LOL. From that one:

Systemic to the Myth of the Machine is the process of understanding termed reductionism. Reductionism seeks an understanding of the whole in an understanding of the parts. It is itself the core of the Myth of the Machine. Only for machines, made things, is reductionism clearly a legitimate process. ...

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II. The Problem with Training Replacing Education

An interesting quote from The Truth will Make You Free (HT: Homeschooling: A Family's Journey) "Training is Not Education":

“The well known experience of the Montessori schools have shown us that in a prepared environment children develop an affection for the materials they work with and have their inmost energy set free to assimilate movement and sense experiences into their own inscrutable purposes. Their growing toward maturity and loving union with the environment is not forced from without, as Freud would have it with his social pressures and sublimation, but by a spontaneous movement from within. This movement will depend on the degree and quality of freedom the child is given to be and to become himself. When the child’s mind is controlled and manipulated by adults, it is trained under social pressure.

But mental training fails to release the inmost energy of the human mind. In fact, such a training forces the child to repress much of his true nature and to remain unconscious in his motivation. His sublimated behavior is willed behavior that does not benefit from his natural and spontaneous feelings. He is made to repress these feelings under the pressure of the superiority complex of adults and the ironic tyranny of loving parents. This tragedy of repression is the social sickness in man that Freud described well but did not interpret correctly, as his view of human nature is derived from sick, repressed man, not from man as he is when educated in freedom.

“Whether one approaches the subject form a philosophical or psychological point of view, the final conclusion is the same Training is an inadequate method of development man’s emotional and mental life, precisely because the human creature is not an animal! Education is based on respecting children as human beings, on giving them the freedom within a prepared and safe environment with an adult to act as a guide rather than a trainer.

Only in education, never in training, are children allowed to be and to become with they really are: uniquely themselves. Only when affirmed by mature parents and educators, i.e. loved for being what they are, even for their ‘otherness,’ and allowed to assimilate spontaneously in their own tempo their whole being into their mental and spiritual life, only then will children find their unique identity and fulfilment, never to be plagued by an identity crisis in later life!”

This reminds me of Fr George Rutler's words on Kindergarten (HT Naru Hodo)

I urge you to keep your child out of kindergarten, because kindergarten will only lead to first grade and then the grim sequence of grade after grade begins and takes its inexorable toll on the mind born fertile but gradually numbed by the pedants who impose on the captive child the flotsam of their own infecundity.

Also, this article on Incarnational Teaching in Kindergarten, from Quiddity.
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III. Thoughts on Lenten practices

Lastly, I've been thinking about Lent and here is Pope Benedict's message on Lent 2009 (HT: Blog by the Sea)

We might wonder what value and meaning there is for us Christians in depriving ourselves of something that in itself is good and useful for our bodily sustenance. The Sacred Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition teach that fasting is a great help to avoid sin and all that leads to it.

.....Saint Peter Chrysologus writes: “Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself” (Sermo 43: PL 52, 320. 322).

...The faithful practice of fasting contributes, moreover, to conferring unity to the whole person, body and soul, helping to avoid sin and grow in intimacy with the Lord. Saint Augustine, who knew all too well his own negative impulses, defining them as “twisted and tangled knottiness” (Confessions, II, 10.18), writes: “I will certainly impose privation, but it is so that he will forgive me, to be pleasing in his eyes, that I may enjoy his delightfulness” (Sermo 400, 3, 3: PL 40, 708). Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word. Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God.

.....In our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning, and has taken on, in a culture characterized by the search for material well-being, a therapeutic value for the care of one’s body. Fasting certainly bring benefits to physical well-being, but for believers, it is, in the first place, a “therapy” to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God.

The kids and I were discussing yesterday what to give up for Lent this year. Brendan gives up the internet and all computer games; he does this every year and also digs through his closet and discards some of his old treasures, very difficult for him because he is temperamentally a collector and keeper of treasures. I admire him; my kids usually devise better penances than I do.

I gave up coffee one year (ouch) and naps another year (OUCH) and blogging last year (that one actually surprised me because it wasn't so bad, surprising because I love blogging; reminded me of the Lent I gave up meat and hardly missed it, even though I'm as much of a meat-eater, or more as the next person). Giving up chocolate is always good for some genuine growing pains. Jen at Conversion Diary recommends that bloggers shut off their comboxes for Lent. That probably works well for some bloggers but I'd hate to lose the contact with my few, faithful commenters who I rarely get to interact with any other way except through trading off comments on each others' blogs ;-). If I do keep blogging, that is. Finally, here's a really really tough penance in my book. Give up reading while eating? The sun would grow dark in my eyes. I'm not sure if I CAN eat without reading. I don't think I've tried it since I COULD read. But maybe I'll give it a shot this year.

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IV.

Almost forgot: this post on Getting Kids to Behave in Church. Though I know childrens' behavior in church is often a vexed issue and there are a lot of good tips there, that wasn't what almost knocked me over. My main strategy in dealing with Mass behavior is to contemplate whether or not to dip the child's head in the holy water font. I never actually have done, but contemplating it usually gets me through the worst moments, along with thinking that by the time they are old enough to actually confess being disruptive in Mass, none of them ever have had to confess it any longer.

Really, the post for me was about:

The Eucharist as the Heart of the Week.

Dialogue, Communion, Silence, Enduring Things

"New Technologies, New Relationships. Promoting a Culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship."--from Pope Benedict XVI, released on the feast day of St Francis de Sales, who is my second son's confirmation patron.

HT: Elizabeth at In the Heart of My Home

from Pope Benedict XVI's message....

While the speed with which the new technologies have evolved in terms of their efficiency and reliability is rightly a source of wonder, their popularity with users should not surprise us, as they respond to a fundamental desire of people to communicate and to relate to each other. This desire for communication and friendship is rooted in our very nature as human beings and cannot be adequately understood as a response to technical innovations.

This makes a lot of sense psychologically to explain all the networks springing up in such creative forms everywhere. I am often stunned by the sheer beauty and ingenuity of the internet in tailoring itself to different types of communities. "Source of wonder" doesn't seem too strong a phrase for this. I told my father when I first got online 10 plus years ago that it was like a huge beautiful city, filled with libraries of treasures and communities of kindred spirits. Obviously it had its dark side and I wasn't oblivious to that, but I had no desire to walk in the dark paths and the good side was SO good that it shone like a million little lights, to me. I haven't seen a reason to change my basic thoughts on this.

The invention of the internet (or development -- I'm probably showing my non-tech side here) seems almost analagous to the invention of the printing press.

Pope Benedict's message contains a caution, though, that is the flip side of the good aspects of the internet:

We should be careful, therefore, never to trivialize the concept or the experience of friendship. It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop on-line friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation. If the desire for virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development.

For good reason, I think, he doesn't mention outright the "bad" side of the internet -- that its communicative possibilities can be used, like any other communication possibilities, for evil. He is focusing here basically on people of "good will", and saying that the cyberworld ought not to become a replacement for the world more directly around you. It shouldn't be a way of filling in empty spaces (which are usually there for a reason) but a way of expanding one's sphere of society outwards. This was a subtler danger that I was not at first aware of when I discovered the internet. It came later when I realized I could get caught up in the glamour of the online world (did you know that "glamour" is a corruption for the word "grammarye" because to the medievals, knowledge of words had a mystique of its own? I think that mystique is a good part of the pull of the internet for me!).

Again, the invention of the printing press seems analogous, if you think about it. We take for granted the goodness of printed words that are readily available to a wider audience. This IS good. However, just as with the internet, the printing press brought some elements of pandemonium. Bad, mistaken information could be transmitted much more readily; there was no assurance that the right books would fafll into the right hands. There was a new layer of abstraction -- people could be taught from books directly instead of from painstakingly copying and memorizing literary treasures. Information capacity exploded, which meant inevitably a layer of superficiality.

Plus, with reading there is an equivalent danger of using books as an escape from reflection and simpler things of the quotidian, and from human intimacy. Ask this bookworm how she knows this.

I have been recently reading some blog pots that seem to speak to this danger that excessive internet use might "disrupt.. the patterns of rest, silence and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development."

• A Time to Keep Silent from Kim at Starry Sky Ranch
• Soul Food from Colleen at Footprints on the Fridge
• Monday's Epiphany from Amy at Epiphany Springs

On the other hand, I was thinking that it is neat to get the link from Elizabeth since she was one of the people that made the cyberworld merge with the "real world" for me -- though we haven't met in person she was a key in prayer effort to save Aidan almost 10 years ago now; the internet allowed the Communion of Saints to work in a way it wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. The internet became a channel of grace.

And printed books, also, have allowed many things that couldn't ever have been possible in the days of hand-copied parchments.

So I think that I have to remember that it's my job to use this gift wisely, to leave ample room for the silences and slow relationship-building times in real life, but to embrace what is good about the internet world.

The Pope writes:

Human hearts are yearning for a world where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion.

May it be so! That will be my prayer!

some quotes on the object of education

Just a tiny bit more about education's proper end:

"Although we often succeed in teaching our pupils 'subjects,' we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning." Dorothy Sayers.

“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.” Robert Hutchins

“Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes different points of view.” Robert Hutchins

it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. Aristotle

the people living in darkness have seen a great light

Picture by Liam R

Christmas brings hope, hope is our only treasure now: we were poor, and now even the little we had has been destroyed. But Christmas means that Christ is born, and every birth means a new life. Jesus came down from heaven to save us from this misery, from the pain, from abandonment, from our homelessness. His power fills us with hope, love, and forgiveness.”

from the mother of this little girl

The Gospel readings today were from Luke 2:

Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother:
Behold this child is set for the fall,
and for the resurrection of many in Israel,
and for a sign which shall be contradicted;
And thy own soul a sword shall pierce,
that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.

Quotes on Gratitude from GK Chesterton

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.


When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

The Faculties of Past, Present and Future

Suscipe, Domine, universam meam libertatem.
Accipe memoriam, intellectum, atque voluntatem omnem.
Quidquid habeo vel possideo mihi largitus es; id tibi totum restituo, ac tuae prorsus voluntati trado gubernandum.
Amorem tui solum cum gratia tua mihi dones, et dives sum satis, hec aliud quidquam ultra posco.

This is St Ignatius's "Suscipe" in Latin. Fr Hardon says that it is better read in Latin because of the nuances of some of the words, that can't quite be translated into English. I would not know.

In English, it goes like this:

Receive, O Lord, all my liberty.
Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will.
Whatsoever I have or hold, You have given me;
I give it all back to You and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will.
Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.'

It is only found in the last week of the Spiritual Exercises, but I had come across it in a prayer booklet years back when we were with Aidan in San Francisco waiting for his transplant, and I memorized it during the long afternoons in the NICU, and have been saying it after communion ever since. So it was like an old friend when I met up with it.

Fr Hardon has an interesting reflection on the "memory, understanding and will" part of the prayer.

"Take" ...means surrendering everything over which we have voluntary control. These are mainly the three faculties of our soul: the memory, the understanding, and the will. ...if we are truly sincere in sacrificing our freedom to God, we are implicitly giving him dominion over the three highest possessions we have:

• our memory of the past;
• our understanding of the present;
• our will with its desires and hopes and loves for the future.

• 
  

Why did this strike me? I think it's because of the connection of the three main faculties of the mind with the processes of Time. I had never thought about it that way before, but memory, understanding and will are our specifically human ways of dealing with the sequential aspects of this great mystery. They are what make us able to transcend what we share in common with animals -- our instincts and conditioning -- and to some extent choose freely what we are to think of and do in light of these things. Augustine says, in Book XI of the Confessions:

Permit me, Lord, to seek further. O my hope, let not my purpose be confounded. For if times past and to come be, I would know where they be. Which yet if I cannot, yet I know, wherever they be, they are not there as future, or past, but present. For if there also they be future, they are not yet there; if there also they be past, they are no longer there. Wheresoever then is whatsoever is, it is only as present.

Although when past facts are related, there are drawn out of the memory, not the things themselves which are past, but words which, conceived by the images of the things, they, in passing, have through the senses left as traces in the mind. Thus my childhood, which now is not, is in time past, which now is not: but now when I recall its image, and tell of it, I behold it in the present, because it is still in my memory.

Whether there be a like cause of foretelling things to come also; that of things which as yet are not, the images may be perceived before, already existing, I confess, O my God, I know not. This indeed I know, that we generally think before on our future actions, and that that forethinking is present, but the action whereof we forethink is not yet, because it is to come. Which, when we have set upon, and have begun to do what we were forethinking, then shall that action be; because then it is no longer future, but present.

Daniel Siegel, in The Developing Mind, says much the same thing -- that our (explicit) memories aren't fixed, but are present representations of our past experience. Every time we recall something, we basically recast it in our present moment. The content of the memory may be something past, but the actual "recollection" is something occurring in our present. This is why, if I understand his complicated prose correctly, a coherent "narrative" of the past -- even a troubled past -- can help us restore our present and affect our futures.

A key sign of a troubled understanding of past problems (and a fairly accurate predictor of troubled relationships with one's children) is the coherence of a narrative about the past. (see Adult Attachment Interview). In other words, the main predictor of shaky attachment with one's children according to attachment theory is not so much a troubled background per se, but the way one has processed it and brought it into the present. "Earned security" is the term for the state of adults with troubled family history who have come to the point where they can remember and recount their past history with some kind of coherent perspective, without either dismissiveness ("everything was fine, but I don't really remember details") or intrusion of present into past ("she always favored my brother.... just last week she took HIS kids to Disneyland, she never does anything nice for ME and my kids..").

There is much more to it than this, obviously. But the part I wanted to bring out is that by understanding (by means of processing and narrating) our past better we can better understand our present and future. It is interesting, and reminds me a bit of Oscar Wilde's insight, though he is talking about personal sin and not past "issues" inflicted on oneself by other people:

Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that: it is the means by which one alters one's past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even the Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do.

Perhaps to connect Wilde's idea better with Siegel's attachment theories the word "metanoia" comes in handy. Metanoia literally means "change of mind" -- it can imply repentance per se but also a sort of more general restoration/change of attitude about things that are dragging one down or locking one in and are perhaps a cause for one's present failings and misdeeds, or at least a contributing factor.

Metanoia in the context of theological discussion, where it is used often, is usually interpreted to mean repentance. However, some people argue that the word should be interpreted more literally to denote changing one's mind, in the sense of embracing thoughts beyond its present limitations or thought patterns (an interpretation which is compatible with the denotative meaning of repentance but replaces its negative connotation with a positive one, focusing on the superior state being approached rather than the inferior prior state being departed from.)

In the context of rhetoric, metanoia is a rhetorical device used to retract a statement just made, and then state it in a better way.

I don't think the theological notion of "repentance" is quite as negative as the Wikipedia entry makes it sound for the purposes of contrast. Etymologically speaking, "repentance" means "re- thinking"; most of the saints encouraged one to employ sorrow and regret for the past as a stepping stone of humility and receptiveness to grace, in order to recast the present and future. Getting bogged down in remorse is contrary to the restoration and renewal aspects of "metanoia". In fact, in some ways this bogging-down in past shame, anger and fear is exactly what keeps us from getting somewhere better. King David said:

"Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me!"

Daniel Siegel says that "shame" is often a problem with people who are bogged down by their pasts. He defines "shame" as something that has been laid down below the foundations of the rational mind, that often doesn't have a just reason. For example, a child may have been brought up to feel "shame" for needing affection or comfort. Siegel has another word for the just sense of guilt and regret we ought to have when we've done something to harm someone or ourselves, but nevertheless he proposes acknowledging the failing and bringing it to the surface of one's mind in order to deal with it and move on. In fact, probably one of the most difficult aspects of a troubled childhood is that it is difficult to perceive what is real guilt and what is "shame" imposed in early childhood, where one's memories are buried under the conscious surface of one's mind.

Siegel is talking from a scientific, secular-psychological perspective, but the parallels are interesting to me. If something is true, it is going to be true across the board.

A bigger subject than I meant to take on at first! I am no theologian, nor a psychoanalyst (obviously!) so these are just things I'm processing in my mind right now.

Argument for an Integrated Curriculum

In Norms and Nobility, David Hicks writes:

"In framing my proposal for a unified curriculum, I have asked myself: How does a scholar's mind work? ....A scholarly mind is characterized by an ability to make connections, to visualize the relatedness of sundry facts, ideas, and concepts. The scholer's mind works like a person laboring over a jigsaw puzzle, grouping pieces by pattern, image, and color, whilee retaining in the mind an outline of the whole picture. The scholar derives his exitement and motivation at first from snapping discrete pieces together and, in time, from seeing the image of the whole puzzle begin to emerge. His excitement, as well as his chances for completeing the puzzle, however, depend on his being given a sufficient number of pieces from the same puzzle.

.... The measured unfolding of history is an ideal vehicle for providing this insight into the connectedness of knowledge's parts and for encouraging the student to perform creative acts of scholarship at any early age. History embraces the whole of knowledge, as well as the student himself, but its vastness need not frighten or overawe the novice. At the beginning, it can be treated, as it was by the ancients, as mythology: the same questions can be asked of Churchill as of Tolkien. Being full of discrete puzzles comprising pieces to ever larger puzzles, history affords an almost immediate opportunity for the student to exercise his or her incipient ability to make connections.

Because the student himself is a part of it, the study of history lends itself to normative inquiry, bridging in exciting and ennobling stories the hiatus beween knowledge and responsibility. No subject deserving of praise as excellent in form or in content is excluded from the study of history, and no curriculum framed in history should fail to form a quick, intuitive, scholarly mind.

There is more in the chapter in this strain, along with specific suggestions for a curriculum for the middle and high schools. I thought it was interesting because though I tend towards using language as the heart of my curriculum, I can see his point about history as an integrative pursuit. As a devotee of etymology, I don't think the two -- language and history -- can be easily separated, anyway, so perhaps the serious pursuit of one will tend to pull in the other.

I think David Hicks' curriculum must have influenced Ambleside's.

speaking, singing, weighing, numbering and tending

This Parent's Review article -- Greek in modern education -- gave me this little description of the Seven Liberal Arts:

Gram loquitur, Dia ver docet, Rhe verba colorat,
Mus canit, ar numerat Geo ponderat As colit astra.

and searching for that gave me this Seven Liberal Arts post from the Common Room. It is part of a whole series and the comments on the article are interesting.

Christine Miller at Classical Christian Homeschooling says that CS Lewis quoted the couplet in The Discarded Image, and translated it this way:

Grammar talks, Dialectic teaches words, Rhetoric colors words,
Music sings, Arithmetic numbers, Geometry weighs, Astronomy tends the stars.

ETA: Drew pointed out that the Latin from the AO article didn't match the English translation (see comments). Apparently CS Lewis remembered the tag as "Dia verba docet" and translated it accordingly. I didn't notice the difference between the two versions when I pasted them in.

Other sources, like the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Liberal Arts, had it as

Dia vera docet

The whole mnemonic there is:

Lingua, tropus, ratio, numerus, tonus, angulus, astra.
Gram. loquiter, Dia. vera docet, Rhe. verba colorat
Mu. canit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, Ast. colit astra.

That's different again. (By the way, that's a typo I found above in the CE. It ought to be "loquitur", and it is written that way in the original CE text. )

I need a librarian emoticon ;-).