The Song of Wandering Aengus: W.B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,  

Because a fire was in my head,  

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,  

And hooked a berry to a thread;  

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,  

I dropped the berry in a stream  

And caught a little silver trout.  

  

When I had laid it on the floor  

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,  

And someone called me by my name:  

It had become a glimmering girl  

With apple blossom in her hair  

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.  

  

Though I am old with wandering  

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,  

I will find out where she has gone,  

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,  

And pluck till time and times are done,  

The silver apples of the moon,  

The golden apples of the sun.

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

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.

Some Unconsidered Aspects of Intellectual Training

Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935)

The more I read of Charlotte Mason's ideas, the more I appreciate the legacy of wisdom she's left behind. I also appreciate the work others have done to clothe her educational ideas in ways that make those ideas presentable and do-able a hundred years or so after they were written.

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay was the first person to introduce me to Charlotte Mason's educational ideas. Ambleside Online helped to make her ideas do-able whilst making it clear that to implement a true CM education, I needed to understand the principles behind her philosophy.

I had years of second hand opinions and interpretations of what a Charlotte Mason education meant, some of it helpful, but there's nothing like going to the source. A part of my intellectual training has been reading for myself what CM wrote in her Original Homeschooling Series. The quotes here are from Chapter XI of School Education.

Our thinking is not a separate thing from our conduct and our prayers, or even from our bodily well-being. Man is not several entities... He can work and love and pray and live righteously, but all these are the outcome of the manner of thoughts he thinks.

John Stott demonstrated a direct link between our thoughts and our actions when he said:

Sow a thought, reap an action

Sow an action, reap a habit

Sow a habit, reap a character

Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Education is no more than applied philosophy - our effort to train children according to the wisdom that is in us; and not according to the last novelty in educational ideas.

We didn't really think about our educational philosophy, as such, at the outset. It sort of came together as we went along; but we did pray for wisdom (and still do) and then we tried (and still try) to apply that wisdom and not allow ourselves to get caught up in the ever changing novelties that come and go in educational circles.

Idea

Literally, that which is seen; hence, form, image, model of any thing in the mind; that which is held or comprehended by the understanding or intellectual faculties.

...nothing is so practical as a great idea, because nothing produces such an abundant outcome of practical effort...

Ideas are not generally associated with practicality. They are the content of the mind, mental representations, and are sometimes connected with a sense of unreality and impracticality, but here we see the power of an idea in initiating actions.

Genius itself, we have been told, is an infinite capacity for taking pains; we would rather say, is the habit of taking infinite pains, for every child is born with the capacity.

The word genius brings to mind people the likes of Thomas Alva Edison, Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci - each of whom had great strength of mind which translated into abundant practical effort. Thomas Edison was labelled addled by his teacher but he was born with a capacity i.e. with the power of receiving ideas or knowledge, and if he hadn't developed the habit of taking infinite pains with his work his life would have passed unnoticed. It's sobering to think how much might have been lost to mankind by the neglect of this habit.

There is nothing sadder than the way we allow intellectual impressions to pass over the surface of our minds, without any effort to retain or assimilate.

How many times have I done this?!!

I underline passages, scripture or quotes that stand out to me as I read.  It's telling that often when I go back through books I've read and see what I've underlined, I think, 'Why on earth did that strike me at the time?' and I am clueless because I allowed it to pass over the surface of my mind.

Taking the time to write some notes in the margins or in a notebook makes all the difference for me.

One of the reasons I'm writing here about what I've read in CM's homeschooling series is for my own discipline because I know that thoughts disentangle themselves as they flow through my lips and fingertips. I want these ideas to have a practical outcome which will only happen if I let them make an impression on my mind.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 
Matthew 22:37

Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood - an Australian Classic

Robbery Under Arms is a ripping good yarn set in the mid 1850's in the colony of New South Wales and is narrated in the first person by a young man, Dick Marston, who tells his tale using the vernacular of the time.

Dick's father was a cattle duffer and he drew Dick and his younger brother Jim into his schemes, ignoring the objections and pleadings of his wife and daughter. After being involved in numerous escapades and criminal activities, Dick and his brother became fugitives, and Dick was eventually caught and imprisoned. He begins his story in a prison cell awaiting the day determined for his hanging.

...it's all up now; there's no get away this time; and I, Dick Marston, as strong as a bullock, as active as a rock wallaby, chock-full of life and spirits and health, have been tried for bush ranging - robbery under arms they call it - and though the blood runs through my veins like the water in the mountain creeks, and every bit of bone and sinew is as sound as the day I was born, I must die on the gallows this day month.

As he looks back on his life, Dick reminisces about his home life and family and the events leading up to his capture. From cattle stealing with his father, adventures with the swashbuckling Captain Starlight, the gold rush of the 1850's and bush ranging escapades, to humorous encounters and colourful characters, the story creates an authentic and vivid picture of colonial New South Wales and Western Victoria.

Everything seemed dead, silent, and solitary, and a rummier start than all, here we're we - three desperate men, driven to make ourselves a home in this lonesome, God-forsaken place! I wasn't very fanciful by that time, but if the devil had risen up to make a fourth amongst us I shouldn't have been surprised. The place, the time, and the men seemed regularly cut out for him and his mob.

I'd had this book for quite a few years but I'd put off reading it because I expected it to be a depressing colonial story. Sometimes Australian books set in this time period are a bit that way but I really enjoyed this one.

The background setting of the gold rush in a part of the story was very interesting and overall the book painted a wonderful picture of Australian life seen from the point of view of a working class lad, the son of a former convict. It would fit in well to a study of Australian History during the colonial time period and would be suitable for around ages 14 years and up.

The book is available for free at Project Gutenberg and this website has information on the goldfields of New South Wales:

http://www.goldtrails.com.au/html_files/explore/sofala-link-history.html

Sanctification in the Commonplace

Sanctification:

The act of making holy.

The act of God's grace by which the affections of men are purified or alienated from sin and the world, exalted to a supreme love to God.

Marriage has been called a long path to sanctification.

I used to be concerned about working this sanctification out in front of our children, day in and day out. My husband and I are very different in personality, which makes life interesting; and we come from disparate backgrounds, which has caused us to misunderstand each other at times.

We've been married for nearly 27 years and for 25 years of that time our children have had occasion to witness our long path to sanctification. We've had a few momentous events throughout those years where it was obvious God was doing something significant in our lives and our children benefited from what we were experiencing. However, we were largely unaware of the myriads of times sanctification was going on because it was wrapped up in the very ordinary and commonplace and sometimes didn't look very pretty, and it certainly didn't look holy.

What is hard about marriage is what is hard also about facing the Christian God: it is the strain of living continually in the light of a conscience other than our own, being under the intimate scrutiny of another pair of eyes.

For marriage inevitably becomes the flagship of all other relationships. One's own home is the place where love must first be practiced before it can truly be practiced anywhere else. No one likes to be out of joint with a good friend or with in-laws or with an employer, but such problems at least can be tolerated. Yet any little thing that comes between a man and his wife is capable of wrenching them apart inside, and if that is not the case, then it can only be due to the growth of a callousness in them which cannot help carrying over into all their other relationships.

The Mystery of Marriage by Mike Mason

Last weekend our eldest son got married and during his wedding speech he shared an incident he'd witnessed on our long path to sanctification. It went something like this:

"When I was about 8 or 9, mum and dad had an argument when we were all having dinner. Dad said something silly and Mum got upset and left the room. Later that evening they were sitting up in their bed and called us all into the room and they both apologized to us kids for not showing love to each other earlier in the evening."

He went on to say that this episode cemented something solid into his life. Mum & Dad were committed to each other, with God as the ultimate authority, and the fact that we were submitted to Him helped embed a deep security into his life. This was a foundation we'd given him that he knew would be a bedrock for his own marriage.

It was very humbling to know that the Lord is so gracious and can use even our stuff-ups, weaknesses and failures  - the ordinary, common things of life - to sanctify us, and our children; to make something beautiful and lasting, an inheritance of grace to be passed on to the next generation.