Book Quote

I would love to see my church's women's study do a book like the one this quote came from:

"Sanctification (becoming holy), then, is essentially an affirmation of life. The whole purpose of the Christian life is the recovery of the original image of God, in other words, the recovery of the kind of human experience which God intended Adam and Eve to have before the Fall. The Christian experience . . . like theirs, affirms life.
Ironically, those who stand in the doctrinal traditions of the Reformation and the apostolic church have inherited from the nineteenth century a spirit of negativism quite out of character with these roots. It has been the spirit of 'Do not taste, Do not touch.' (Col 2:21) It has been characterized by a denunciation of the mind and a rejection of all cultural activities. The mind has been seen as a boogieman, and creativity as wasteful luxury. And, as in the 'tradition' opposed by Paul, this pirit of negativism has been presented as a virtuous and religious attitude.
Over against such a tradition, we contend for a view of sanctification which affirms all those activities which are truly human. Why? Because that is the sort of experience God intended us to have and which he called 'very good.' . . . Such an experience is fundamental to the Christian life because to be human is to be a reflection, as a finite and physical person, of the experience of the infinite Person who made us."
from Being Human: The Nature of Spiritual Experience by Ranald Macauley and Jerram Barrs

I'd like to know, when there are so many interesting aspects of Christianity to learn about, why does every woman's Bible Study I've ever heard of seem to only cycle through character studies of women in the Bible, being a Proverbs 31 woman, and wifely submission?

This is the book that was selected for the first annual book discussion at the CM Conference coming up in about ten days.

Our New Van!

We have a new van! Okay, it's not new new, it's a 2001 Honda Odyssey, but it looks new. It's a gorgeous gold color (the brochure says "tan" but it looks gold), and it has a CD player!!

As we drove it around town enjoying the newness, I was reminded of the excited, new feeling you have when there's a new baby in the house. Except that there's no hormone fluctuations, post-partum recovery or exhaustion from sleepness nights. Just pure newness. Although the excitement of a new vehicle wears off a lot quicker . . .

This means we're no longer limited to driving around town (our old van's transmission would no longer go up hills, and any way out of town is uphill). It also means, that, as long as the old van holds up, we're not house-bound when Mr. B is at work.

This photo isn't our van, it's a picture from the internet of a 2001 Odyssey that's the same color as ours.

Literary Meme

I saw this over at Little Pink House and thought it looked like fun.

How it works:

1.grab the book closest to you
2.open it to page 161
3. find the fifth full sentence
4.post the text of the sentence to your blog
5.don't search around for the coolest book you have, use the one that is really next to you.

The book closest to me is The Cloud of Witness, an old 1800's devotional. I keep it at the computer because I was transcribing it (now my newly typing son is!) It's a devotional book with many poems, and the fifth full sentence is from a Wordsworth poem.

So, like the Mountain, may we grow more bright
From unimpeded commerce with the Sun,
At the approach of all-invading night!

I also have Little Arthur's History of England right here (another one I'm transcribing) and Charlotte Mason's Volume 5 (I'm working with that one, too.) So where are the books I'm just reading? Come to think of it, I think I'm so busy working with books that I don't have even one that I'm simply reading!

Happy Mother's Day!

Itm having a great day - I'm watching my toddler play in her sandbox under our cherry tree, with dappled sunlight on her hair, and my sons practicing fencing with some wooden dowels. I received a really nice note from an AO member, and I'm remembering three years ago at church with my six-month-old daughter, a church friend whispered in my ear, "I see you brought your Mother's Day gift with you." :)

Happy Mother's day to all my gentle parenting and CM homeschooling friends!

Fragonard Gets With the Times

I think it's admirable when classic artists don't allow themselves to get stuck in tradition, but stay relevant by keeping in step with current trends.

Threat to Internet Radio

I love internet radio, I have it on most of the day to my favorite classical radio station.

But internet radio is under a threat.

"Recently the Copyright Royalty Board announced new royalty rates for streaming sound recordings of music over the Internet. The new rates are much higher than before and threaten to shut many webcasters down as soon as July 15th when the rates go into effect . . . . If you want to weigh in on this issue, contact your congressman and ask him or her to co-sponsor H.R. 2060." Read more here.

Foggy Lense

You Know You Have it Bad...

...when you get an excited shiver down your spine just reading the rules for the use of punctuation marks.

Isn't language an amazing thing?

(And what does "you have it bad" mean--"you're badly off" or "you have a bad case of It"?)