Choosing Chrysaor

"D'you remember the book of German legends downstairs Tales from the Nibelungen Lied? There was a sword in the story, the sword Balmung, stolen from the treasure hoard. It was the sword of conquest and, wherever it went, it brought woe and destruction. That's the very sword Germany's using today. She's fighting with the sword Balmung. The United Nations are using another sword, Chrysaor, the golden sword of Justice.

"There's a rambling old Elizabethan poem about a knight who carried that sword long ago. He fought for justice and cared only to right the wrong. He wasn't always successful. Made a ghastly muddle of his various quests and collected a host of enemies who loathed him because he tried to do justly. We're using the sword Chrysaor, like that knight. We're fighting for freedom and justice and the rights of the weak against the strong...and whatever we've done wrong in the past, there's no doubt that today we are fighting with the sword Chrysaor."

I'm reading Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery to my 9 year old. I've read it aloud to all my children and now it's Moozle's turn. (I wrote a bit about the book here) Up until recently I was unable to trace the where the swords appeared in the tales and then I discovered that the sword Balmung was called Nothung in Wagner's version of The Nibelungenlied and it was Siegfried's mighty sword. The Age of Fable by Thomas Bullfinch has a short summary of the story here.

The Elizabethan poem referred to in the quote turned out to be The Faerie Queen. Some of my children have read Fierce Wars & Faithful Loves scheduled in Ambleside Online Year 8 which is Book 1 of Edmund Spencer's epic poem but there was nothing in there about Chrysaor. The other day I learned that the story is in Book 5 (there are six of them in this poem).The quote below is from a retelling of the Faerie Queen by Mary Macleod (1916) which is an easier introduction to the poem:

Even from his cradle Artegall had been brought up to justice; for one day when he was a little child playing with his companions, he had been found by a great and wonderful lady called Astræa, who, while she dwelt here among earthly men, instructed them in the rules of justice...

She taught him, to weigh equally both right and wrong, and where severity was needed to measure it out according to the line of conscience...

Astræa gave Artegall a wonderful sword, called "Chrysaor," which excelled all other swords. It was made of most perfect metal, tempered with adamant, all garnished with gold upon the blade, whereby it took its name.

In course of time Astræa left this world...But she left behind her on earth her servant, an Iron Man, who always attended on her to execute her Judgments, and she bade him go with Artegall and do whatever he was told. The man's name was Talus; he was made of iron mould, immovable, irresistible, unchanging; he held in his hand an iron flail, with which he threshed out falsehood and unfolded the truth.


The painting below by John Hamilton Mortimer (1778) is titled Sir Arthegal, the Knight of Justice, with Talus, the Iron Man and was inspired by The Faerie Queen. Sir Arthegal is depicted holding the sword Chrysaor.

 

Linking up with Tina at Booknificent Thursday.

Co-operating with the Divine Teacher

Alpine Flowers, Mt Kosciusko

Some thoughts on atmosphere & relationship...

I'm taking Oswald Chambers out of his initial context here, but this quote from his book My Utmost for His Highest meshes with what I've been reading in Charlotte Mason's book, Parents and Children, especially Chapter 5:

The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to look after, and it is the one thing that is being continually assailed.

It's easy to put all our work into the 'doing' of education and to forget or disregard the importance of 'relationship' - with our child and with the Divine Teacher.

And without the relationship we don't have the atmosphere that is vital part of the whole:

Education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life.

Chambers says that relationship is the area where we find ourselves constantly assailed.

To assail:

To attack with a view to overcome, by motives applied to the passions 

To overthrow

I generally know when I'm being assailed.

I become aware that I've made decisions without first pausing in my spirit.

I've made a decision based on my passions or feelings or a sense of urgency.

For me this isn't usually in the big decisions. I'll talk those through with my husband.

It's all the small ones that add up over time.

Charlotte Mason's words on co-operating with the Divine Teacher are encouraging but at the same time sobering:

Our co-operation appears to be the indispensable condition of all the divine workings. We recognise this in what we call spiritual things, meaning the things that have to do more especially with our approaches to God; but the new thing to us is, that grammar, for example, may be taught in such a way as to invite and obtain the co-operation of the Divine Teacher, or in such a way as to exclude His illuminating presence from the schoolroom.

Part of that co-operation involves keeping our relationship with God, and the atmosphere it produces, not just intact but vigorous and healthy.

It is wonderfully empowering, not to mention reassuring, to know that God instructs my child.

He knows my child's innermost being.

He is familiar with all his/her ways.

'God doth Instruct.'––In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother's key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the Divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child.

Let the mother visualise the thought as an illuminated scroll about her newborn child, and let her never contemplate any kind of instruction for her child, except under the sense of the divine co-operation. 

Self Education

In his book, Man - The Dwelling Place of God, A.W. Tozer (a self-taught man himself) has a chapter on self-education where he lists intellectual activities in the order of their importance:

Thinking 

Observation

Reading

Conversation may once have been part of this list but Tozer made the comment that conversation today is mostly sterile. He was writing over fifty years ago and it made me wonder what he'd think if he was alive now and could listen in on the average adult conversation.

I believe that pure thinking will do more to educate a man than any other activity he can engage in. To afford sympathetic entertainment to abstract ideas, to let one idea beget another, and that another, till the mind teems with them; to compare one idea with others, to weigh, to consider, evaluate, approve, reject, correct, refine; to join thought with thought like an architect till a noble edifice has been created within the mind...
and all this without so much as moving from our chair or opening the eyes - this is to soar above all the lower creation and to come near to the angels of God.

Of all earth's creatures only man can think in this way. And while thinking is the mightiest act a man can perform, perhaps for the very reason that it is the mightiest, it is the one act he likes the least and avoids most.

To think without a proper amount of good reading is to limit our thinking to our own tiny plot of ground. The crop cannot be large. To observe only and neglect reading is to deny ourselves the immense value of other people's observations...

Extensive reading without the discipline of practical observation will lead to bookishness and artificiality. Reading and observing without a great deal of meditating will fill the mind with learned lumber that will always remain alien to us. Knowledge to be our own must be digested by thinking. 

Charlotte Mason wrote something that ties in well with Tozer's observations. She suggests that before turning off your light that you read:

...a leading article from a newspaper, say, or a chapter from Boswell or Jane Austen, or one of Lamb's Essays...

Then narrate silently what you've read...

[You] will not be satisfied with the result but [you] will find that in the act of narrating every power of [your]  mind comes into play, that points and bearings which [you] had not observed are brought out; that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become a part of [your] personal experience...

You know - you have thought and made observations.
You have assimilated what you've read.
The knowledge has been digested.

Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally

Thomas Keneally is an Australian author who first heard of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and the unlikely hero of this book, when he was looking at leather briefcases in a shop in the USA in 1980.

The shop belonged to a 'Schindler survivor' and Keneally's book is based on the detailed recollections of the Schindler Jews and other witnesses, including Oskar Schindler himself. 

In his introduction the author states that he has used his craft as a novelist to tell a true story and has tried to avoid all fiction in the telling of it. Although at times it was necessary to reconstruct incomplete conversations, all events are based on eye witness accounts.

An unlikely hero was the term I used to describe Schindler: affluent, fond of good food and wine, a capitalist to the core and a womaniser, he moved in high places and used the strength of a debased and barbarous system to keep over 1200 Jews working in his factories from annihilation in the Nazi death camps.

His rescue work began in 1943 in Nazi occupied Poland with an act of kindness towards a misused young Jewish woman in the service of a brutal SS officer; but he neglected and frequently abandoned his wife who was loyal to him, and who was instrumental in saving the lives of many of his workers.

The rescued Jews 'had their attention taken by the grand, magical, omni-provident Oskar,' and it was hard 'to see behind the Herr Direktor to the quiet wife. But to the dying, Emilie was more visible...One wonders if some of Emilie's kindnesses...may not have been absorbed into the Oskar legend...'

Emilie said of her husband that he had done 'nothing astounding before the war and had been unexceptional since.' The war gave him an opportunity to summon up virtue for a season and Thomas Keneally has told his story well, taking care to distinguish between the real man and the myth, at the same time acknowledging the role Emilie Schindler played.

As they got closer to the gate, they became aware that Herr Schindler was standing in the midst of the SS men...A short, dark SS officer stood beside him. It was the commander...Liepold. Oscar had already discovered - the women would discover it soon - that Liepold, unlike his middle-aged garrison, had not yet lost faith in that opposition called The Final Solution. Yet though he was...the supposed incarnation of authority...it was Oskar who stepped forward as the lines of women stopped.                   

The women staggered across the cobbles in their tattered Auschwitz clothes. Their heads were cropped. Some of them were too ill, too hollowed out, to be easily recognised. Yet it was an astounding assembly. It would not surprise anyone to find out later that no such reunion occurred anywhere else in stricken Europe. That there had never been, and would not be, any other Auschwitz rescue like this one.

Places of interest:

Schindler Jews

The Jewish Virtual Library - a list of the names included on 'Schindler's list,' which he gave to the SS in order to convince them his 'factory workers' were essential to the war effort.

Wednesday with Words: Abstractitis

 The effect of this disease, now endemic on both sides of the Atlantic, is to make the patient write such sentences as, Participation by the men in the control of the industry is non-existent, instead of, The men have no part in the control of the industry; Early expectation of a vacancy is indicated by the firm, instead of, The firm say they expect to have a vacancy soon; The availability of this material is diminishing, instead of, This material is getting scarcer; A cessation of dredging has taken place, instead of, Dredging has stopped; Was this the realization of an anticipated liability? instead of, Did you expect you would have to do this? And so on, with an abstract word always in command as the subject of the sentence. Persons and what they do, things and what is done to them, are put in the background, and we can only peer at them through a glass darkly. It may no doubt be said that in these examples the meaning is clear enough; but the danger is that, once the disease gets a hold, it sets up a chain reaction. A writer uses abstract words because his thoughts are cloudy; the habit of using them clouds his thoughts still further; he may end by concealing his meaning not only from his readers but also from himself, and writing such sentences as The actualisation of the motivation of the forces must to a great extent be a matter of personal angularity.  

H.W. Fowler (1858-1933)

When I read the above quote I thought of George Orwell. He wrote about what he saw happening to the English language in his day:

By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. 

He gives an example using the Book of Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English: 

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Wednesday with Words - Plutarch

We've been reading through Plutarch's life of Quintus Fabius Maximus, learning some things about his character and drawing lessons from his life.

Fabius was slow and steady, a plodder, a characteristic that was not appreciated by his next in command, the impulsive and arrogant Lucius Minucius (love that name!).

So, basically, Fabius was called to Rome and in his absence Minucius took matters into his own hands and attacked Hannibal. Instead of being punished, Minucius was elevated by those opposed to the rule of Fabius to a position of equal authority with Fabius and continued in his rash behaviour, despising the advice of the older man. Hannibal took advantage of the rift and cunningly lured Minucius into a battle:

When, therefore, (Fabius) saw the army of Minucius encompassed by the enemy, and that by their countenance and shifting their ground, they appeared more disposed to flight than to resistance, with a great sigh, striking his hand upon his thigh, he said to those about him, "O Hercules! how much sooner than I expected, though later than he seemed to desire, hath Minucius destroyed himself!"

Fabius's response to the younger man's rashness and flouting of authority was:

"We must make haste to rescue Minucius, who is a valiant man, and a lover of his country; and if he hath been too forward to engage the enemy, at another time we will tell him of it."

Magnanimous, I'd call that.

Hannibal, seeing so sudden a change of affairs, and Fabius, beyond the force of his age, opening his way through the ranks up the hill-side, that he might join Minucius, warily forbore, sounded a retreat, and drew off his men into their camp...

Fabius, after his men had picked up the spoils of the field, retired to his own camp, without saying any harsh or reproachful thing to his colleague...

The man who has understanding holds his tongue.
Proverbs 11:12

Minucius learnt a valuable lesson that day. He came to an understanding of authority and submission and that the race isn't always to the swift. Gathering his army around him he said these words to his men:

"To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature; but to learn and improve by the faults we have committed, is that which becomes a good and sensible man. Some reasons I may have to accuse fortune, but I have many more to thank her; for in a few hours she hath cured a long mistake, and taught me that I am not the man who should command others, but have need of another to command me; and that we are not to contend for victory over those to whom it is our advantage to yield."

When pride comes then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. 

Proverbs 11:2

Minucius's words got me thinking about churches and the problems that result when we get this authority and yielding wrong. I've seen lots of people just drift away or go off and do their own thing because they couldn't have others 'command' them - I'm not talking about bad or abusive leadership, but a general unwillingness to yield to anyone but themselves.

Just as Minucius disregarded and despised the leadership of a man he thought was too slow, mistaking circumspection for cowardice, we can chafe under the leadership of someone who isn't doing things the way we think they should be done or in the time frame we'd prefer.

For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:12

 Until we learn how to be under authority, we're not going to be able to handle being in authority.

Wednesday with Words: The Real Diary of a Real Boy

In the early 1900's Henry A. Shute was rummaging in his father's shed and came across an old salt box which contained an interesting assortment of paraphernalia his father had kept: 'frog's hind leg, extra dry; wing of blue jay, very ditto' and a copybook inscribed with the word, 'Diry.'

The examination of this copy-book lasted the rest of the day, and it was read with the peculiar pleasure one experiences in reviewing some of the events of a happy boyhood.

With the earnest hope that others may experience a little of the pleasure I gained from the reading, I submit the "Diry" to the public.

HENRY A. SHUTE.

EXETER, N. H. Sept. 23, 1902.

DIRY

Father thot i aught to keep a diry, but i sed i dident want to, because i coodent wright well enuf, but he sed he wood give $1000 dolars if he had kept a diry when he was a boy.

Mother said she gessed nobody wood dass to read it, but father said everybody would tumble over each other to read it, anyhow he wood give $1000 dolars if he had kept it. i told him i wood keep one regular if he wood give me a quarter of a dolar a week, but he said i had got to keep it anyhow and i woodent get no quarter for it neither, but he woodent ask to read it for a year, and i know he will forget it before that, so i am going to wright just what i want to in it. Father always forgets everything but my lickins. he remembers them every time you bet.

December 7, 186- Got sent to bed last nite for smoking hayseed cigars and can't go with Beany enny more. It is funny, my father wont let me go with Beany becaus he is tuf, and Pewts father wont let Pewt go with me becaus im tuf, and Beanys father says if he catches me or Pewt in his yard he will lick time out of us. Rany today.

December 8. Skinny Bruce got licked in school today. Skipy Moses was in the wood box all the morning.

December 9. brite and fair, speakin day today. missed in Horatius at the brige.

Jan. 15. i am all spekled over. mother says she is afrade i have got chicken pocks. i gess i have been in the hen koop to mutch.

Jan. 16. the speckles have all gone of. doctor Perry says i et to many donuts.

Jan. 18. brite and fair. yesterday to and day before yesterday i have forgot.

Jan. 19. snowed all day. Me and Beany is mad.

Jan. 20. father is sick becaus he et to mutch salt fish and potato and pork. he is auful cross and hit me a bat today becaus i left the door open. i gess he will be sorry when i am ded.

May 21. erly this afternoon me and Fatty Melcher got some real segars at Henry Simsons store and went down behind old man Churchills store and smoked them. we were both auful sick and laid there all the afternoon. when i went home i walked wobbly and mother asked me if i was sick and she put me to bed and was going to send for the docter, but father came in and when he found out what aled me he laffed and said it served me rite. then after supper he set out on the steps rite under my window and smoked a old pipe and i cood smell it and i thought i shood die. then mother asked him to go away and he laffed and said all rite, but he gessed i had enuf for one day and she said she gessed so and i gess so too. he said if it hadent made me sick he wood have licked me.

i dont see why it is so, father swears sometimes when he hits his thum with a hammer and once when he was in the dark he was walking towards the door with his arms out to feel for the door, one arm went on one side of the door and the other arm on the other side and he hit his nose a fearful bump rite on the ege of the door, and i wish you cood have heard him swear, well if i swear he licks me, and he smokes and if i do he says he will lick me and he dont go to church and if i dont go he says he will lick me. O dear i gess i wont smoke enny more.

Two of my children started off with spelling similar to what was written in the Diry. The youngest of them was leaning over my shoulder as I was reading some extracts aloud and exclaimed, "Mummy! The spelling is all wrong!" Well, we've made progress - spelling mistakes recognized.
The next day the same child started a diary (spelled correctly), which began with a 'preface.' I was allowed a brief glimpse of it this morning - two full pages of the events of the past couple of days and some random comments. I'm often surprised at what inspires my children.

 The Real Diary of a Real Boy by Henry A. Shute is in the public domain and free at Project Gutenberg.

Wednesday with Words: John Donne

'...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again......No man is an island, entire of itself...'

John Donne, Meditation XVII 

 

Wednesday with Words - Island of the World

I started reading Island of the World by Michael O' Brien during the Christmas break. There are so many sections I've underlined and I'd like to quote but I chose this one because we're getting ready to start into our regular routine again after a few weeks off and like the quote says, "It is easier to read no books and remain uneducated."

  

It is a warm evening, midsummer. Fra Antonio has a little talk with the boys who serve at the altar, not the youngest, just those who are ages eleven to fifteen. Josip is only ten, though he will soon be eleven. Perhaps he is included because he is advanced in his studies and is unusually tall for his age - taller than some of the boys whose voices have cracked...

It is a talk about purity...

Fra Anto tells them that the changes in their bodies are good. These are new powers, the powers of life itself. But they must be used in a holy way. The strength of these powers is such that a young man can easily be ruled by them, if he does not grow strong in his character.

"You study to train your mind," he says. "You work hard to build up your muscles when you work with your fathers in the field. You don't always like it. It is easier to read no books and remain uneducated. It's easier not to strain your mind and body with labor, easier to lie on the ground all day and let the birds drop boiled eggs into your mouths." (Italics mine) 

  

I think the quote above ties in well with Charlotte Mason's thoughts from A Philosophy of Education on purity and its association with the mind and is something I'm pondering as I plan what we are doing this year:

 

Now a fact not generally recognised is that offences of the kind which most distress parents and teachers are bred in the mindand in an empty mind at that. That is why parents, who endeavour to save their sons from the corruption of the Public School by having them taught at home, are apt to miss their mark. The abundant leisure afforded by home teaching offers that empty chamber swept and garnished which invites sins that can be committed in thought and in solitude. Our schools err, too, in not giving anything like enough work of the kind that from its absorbing interest compels reflection and tends to secure a mind continually and wholesomely occupied.