A Beautiful Evening

We had a late afternoon thunder shower, so we took a walk after dinner. It was still light, cool from the storm, and everything looked fresh.

When we got home, we could hear loud laughing and some even louder rapp-pish music down the street--our next door neighbors were having a party. (It's still partially rural, so it wasn't as if they were right in our backyard or anything.)

And then somebody behind us started lighting off fireworks! So we sat outside to enjoy the evening. It was just getting dark.

Tim and J lit a small fire to experiment with the burning properties of sap. There were the revelling sounds of the party next door. Our neighbors on the other side were sitting on their front porch, also enjoying the evening. Fireflies were coming up all around us. A nice fireworks display was going off behind us. Miss M was a little afraid of the noise of the fireworks, so she was sitting in my lap. She liked the lights of the fireworks, though, and her brothers' fire fascinated her. She watched everything in silence for a few minutes, and then she blurted out, "I'm happy!"

It almost sounded like she was surprised!

Being Human ch 7: The Mind

No, I didn't forget this book. But ever since the CM conference and my experience with the leg cramps, I've been reading everything I could about how to deal with them. But now I'm back to Being Human (by Ranald MacAuley and Jerram Barrs). This book deserves a second reading, so I'll be re-reading it with Miss Roxie when she gets her copy.

This chapter is about how to understand the role of the mind in a Christian philosophy that isn't based on Platonic dualism. In light of scientific evidence and criticism that casts doubt on the truth of Scripture, the tendency is to go towards one of two extremes - either stubbornly refuse to consider or accept science or critism (evangelicalism), or to decide that faith is something different and removed from the reason of the mind and based on experience (liberal theology). Traditional evangelicals bury their head in the sand and accuse anything that comes from the secular world or appeals to the intellect as evil. Liberals look at faith as being divorced from reason. It doesn't matter whether the story of Adam really happened, they say. What matters is that I feel the presence of God in my heart.

But there's a middle ground. "Thou it is possible to declare the truth while knowing little about it, believers should never consider ignorance a virtue, but always seek to understand what Christianity is and how it relates to contemporary ideas. In this way we grow as Christians and become better able to help others see both what is wrong in alternative systems of thought which deny God and also the truth revealed in the Bible. The very fact that truth exists will be a source of wonder and excitement . . . As this happens the division between religious and non-religious topics of conversation disappears. Since almost everything one talks about necessarily relates in some way or other to the biblical world view, conversations will tend to lead toward the discussion of the basic truths of the Christian faith without any artificial manipulation . . . We have nothing to fear intellectually; it is other world views which are false, and demonstrably so."

There's also no need to discourage honest skepticism - if God is truth, then we don't have to be afraid that too much prying and questioning will reveal weaknesses that will erode faith.

Last Day of School

We're finished for the year! This is the first year we've done this - usually we work through most of the summer and take 2 or 3 weeks off in August before starting the new year (I've always been afraid that once I stopped for longer than that, I'd never start again . . .)

This year the boys wanted a "real" summer vacation. So we haven't taken off a week here and there so much during the year, and today was our last day of school - tomorrow begins eight glorious weeks of free time!

Well, not totally free - we'll still have an hour and a half in the morning for chores, devotions and a readaloud (we're going to try Waverley by Sir Walter Scott - how's that for ambitious?) and the boys will have a few other things to do. Tim will be working on math and Latin, J will be working on spelling, grammar and Algebra, and L will be practicing basic math skills, a little bit of writing, and I'll be reading him Hillyer's Child's Geography of the World. He's starting Year 5 next year and we have the option of doing either the Hillyer book or Halliburton's Book of Marvels. We have both and I don't want him to miss either one, so I'm reading him one over the summer.

It sounds like a lot, but we'll be getting done before noon every day and the stuff we're doing is either fun stuff or things they've needed focused time with (like L and his basic math facts).

Aside from that, they're going to be reading books of their choice. We looked at the Barnes and Noble summer reading program - if your child reads a certain number of books, Barnes and Noble will award him with a free book. But we didn't like their selection of book awards, and it's only for little kids. So I'm going to buy them a book of their choice for every six books they read.

L will probably get his book, he plans to read Paddington Bear and Boxcar Children books, and those are pretty easy for him. J will likely start out overly-ambitious and pick books like The Silmarillion, Ben Hur, and The Bride of Lammermoor - and never finish even one because he spent the summer adding a new deck onto the house instead of reading. T will probably end up with a complete new library before the summer's over.

What will I do with eight whole weeks? I'm hoping to clear out piles of stuff that's built up in my bedroom for the last four years, since I was pregnant. We have plans for re-arranging the room with different storage, and that should help, but that project won't happen overnight.

Modern Declaration of Independence

We like to read the Declaration of Independence every July 4th, but the younger ones sometimes need a little help to get the gist of it. So I did a search online and found this paraphrase.
http://www.mrsrobertson.com/moderndecofind.htm

(Blogger is having a bad hair day and won't let me hotlink)

Playing With Water

A Visitor

An Interesting Dialog About Language

I've been following the posts about dumbing down our language at The Common Room and Dewey's Treehouse. I just read yesterday . . . well, no, let me see if I can find it. I followed a link to a poster's blog from another forum, which had a link to some Tips for Christian Bloggers. One of the tips was:

"5. Use common words. The web is indexed by strands of words and phrases (not by pictures or songs or cool graphics). Effectively reaching your potential audience means using these common words. When you write theologically, make sure you are using the terms most frequently used for your subject. Use creative words but never forget the most common ones, too. Get familiar with the common vernacular."

Okay, in that case, it's about using the most common phrases so that your blog posts come up when people do google searches. But I'm also familiar with the concept of using only small words and short sentences when discussing religion so that anyone can understand what you're saying. After all, it's salvation being discussed and nobody should be excluded because they don't have an expensive college degree.

Which makes me wonder, throughout history, it's often been Christians leading a lot of the trends and philosophical thinking. Now it's secular people desiring to dumb down the masses, and Christians are following that trend, falling right into it, playing along and exascerbating the problem in the name of the gospel. What's a Christian to do? Use big words and alienate the masses? How can we be the kind of force that Christians used to be who elevated the masses and educated them? I don't know, and, anyway, I'm getting off my purpose, which was to share this dialog.

The Headmistress started with these two posts about Big Words and Dick and Jane, and continued with a post about Language Wars. MamaSquirrel added her own post, The Headmistress posted another entry, and MamaSquirrel added yet one more.

It makes very interesting reading.

Hmmm . . .

Miss M was standing and chatting with her Daddy when a loud burp emerged from her.

Daddy: "What do you say?"

M: silence

Daddy: M, what are you supposed to say?"

M: just looks at him silently.

Daddy: "M, what do you say when you burp?"

M: "I didn't burp."

Daddy: "Yes you did, we all heard you!"

M: "No, I didn't."

Daddy: "If you can't say excuse me, then you need to go into the other room."

M: "But I didn't burp."

Daddy: (rising to escort her to the other room)

M: (very quickly) "ES'CUSE ME!"

Mommy: "That's better, that's what polite people say when they burp."

M: "But I didn't burp!"

Mommy: "Then what was that?"

M: "I yawned!"

Mommy: "You can still say excuse me."

M: "No, I can't."

Mommy: "Many polite people say excuse me after they yawn."

M: "Not this person."

-------------------------------

I'm both laughing at her reasoning, and bewildered about how to deal with such determined stubbornness.

Some Sci-Fi

I heard that SciFi.com is getting rid of their short story archive, so I went over to have a look and found this great story. I don't know how long it'll be there, and I can't seem to find it elsewhere on the net, so enjoy it while you can.

Voice of Steel by Sean McMullen


Hat tip to Speculative Faith.

Princess M

She dressed herself to go out and play - can you tell?

First Day of Summer

We commemorated the day with a long walk, Italian Ice, a game of frisbee, some relaxing in the backyard and catching fireflies.

Miss M insisted on taking her favorite toy car (a camper) with us on our walk. She's so fond of that camper that she even gave it a name - Phantom of the Opera (?) As it got dark and we went in, I pointed out the moon to her - a bright, perfect half-moon. She asked, "Why is that moon broken? Did Jesus break it?"

Twenty Years Ago

This is a little late - our 20th anniversary was actually last month. I had planned to post, but finding and scanning a wedding photo took some time and other things came up, etc., etc., etc. And then I didn't want to stop at a wedding photo . . .

Here we are the day we got engaged. He had been divorced for about three years and had two adolescent children living with him. We didn't think we'd have children of our own because he'd taken steps to prevent that during his first marriage. But I didn't really think I was the maternal type, anyway.

Our wedding; I wore the dress my mother had worn at her wedding almost thirty years earlier:

Our miracle baby (after a reversal that the doctor wasn't
sure would work because the time gap between
the original operation and the reversal had been too long).
I discovered that I was the maternal type - I enjoyed motherhood
more than I ever dreamed I would!

A second miracle baby!

Surprise! A third miracle baby!
This was at the peak of Tim and J's cowboy phase.

And a surprise fourth miracle baby!

The Conference

Okay, so I've had a few days to rest, recover and reflect after the conference.

I didn't attend as much of the conference as I'd thought I would. Last year I brought Miss M, and I spent most of the conference chasing her and trying to keep her quiet. This year I left her home with Daddy, but I missed just as much because I was busy doing other things. I had brought along a modest amount of books to experiment whether they might sell, so I spent any few minutes of free time I had checking in at the vending area (about half of them sold; the experiment was a failure and I won't be doing that again! Fortunately, another vendor took the rest off my hands to sell in her homeschool bookstore, so I wasn't out any money!) I was scheduled to "preside" at three breakout sessions (the only three I got to attend, except the one on assessment), and some chats with AO members, and private counseling sessions with AO members (the private counseling was my favorite part of the conference.)

The first day of the conference, the rooms were freezing - the AC was at 60 degrees, and that night I wasn't able to get warm, which led to leg cramps and a miserable, sleepless night, so I was bleary-eyed on Thursday. I've been doing lots of reading (3 books and lots of internet searches) since I got back, and I suspect that I have a magnesium deficiency, so I'm trying a highly absorbable form of magnesium. Leg cramps have been an ongoing problem for me the past year.

This conference was about assessment - in other words, testing and how to grade tests in a CM education. I've been wanting to have prepared tests like the ones CM used in her PNEU schools, only with questions that pertain to AO books, so I was anxious to learn all I could from this conference. And, although the assessment session was geared for school settings (complete with lots of official-sounding educational-ese jargon), I did have a revelation. One thing that public schools are criticized for is that they "teach to the test." But guess what? Charlotte Mason can be "taught to the test," too! By having your exam questions already laid out, you as the teacher know what to bring out in discussions after the child narrates, or what to write on the board before the child reads. The teacher who spoke about this called it "guided instruction," but it simply means that, if the teacher knows what concept she wants to emphasize in a reading, she can bring it up as she discusses the book with the child. AO Moms sometimes ask about lesson plans, or "shouldn't my child be getting more out this book, like the theme, or something?" and I think that this "guided instruction," directed by knowing what question will be asked on the test, is the answer.

The difference between traditional "teaching to the test" and CM's "teaching to the test" is that the traditional way has kids memorizing facts so they can fill in the right blanks on a test. But a CM exam question is going to be open-ended, designed to make the child think about "essential" issues, so "teaching to the test" will look more like getting him to think about big issues like hypocrisy, or the role of religion in government, or the topical geography of an area as he reads. It means that the parent has to have an idea of what concept is being brought out in a book - why is this book important enough to be used as a school text? So, creating AO exams will partially take the form of figuring out what major concepts are in the books, and why they're being used. In year 7, for example, The Once and Future King is scheduled because it considers different approaches to leadership (I never would have gotten that by reading it myself; I happen to know that because of a post that Wendy C. sent to the HEO list!) I think that will be harder than just coming up with questions that are like the questions CM used (which is what I had originally planned to do!)

How are these tests graded? With a rubric! A rubric is a grid. An essay/answer is graded on a scale of 1-5 according to how correct the student got his facts, how thoroughly he understood the concept, how well he spelled and used grammar, etc. If he understands it well enough to compare it to something else, or make up a story or example based on it, or apply it to another situation, he would het points for comprehension. Then you total up the points. On the grid I just described, with three facets scoring 5 points each, a student could earn a possible 15 points on a question. If he got a total of ten points, he'd have a 10/15 for that question, which would give him a 66 percent for that question. An average of his percentages for all the questions would give him his grade. Brilliant, isn't it? There is reason to suspect that CM herself used some kind of percentage to grade exams - her students were graded. At the conference, they showed us a teacher's grade records of her students with numbers beside them that looked very much like percentages.

The "Book Club" discussion (remember the book Being Human that I've been blogging about?) was a highlight of the conference. Did I mention that already?

Of course, seeing AO people was great, and being around people (both homeschoolers and school people) who know who know what CM is and can appreciate nature and art is always an encouragement.

The sessions were taped on tiny MP3 recorders, and there are plans to make MP3 downloads available (probably for a fee, which I expect to be extremely reasonable) so I'll be catching up with what I missed that way.

[Tammy Glaser is also blogging about the conference; hers are more complete than mine. See here and here.]

Being Human, a quote from ch 5

A look at the balance between faith and works.

"Because of the supposed antithesis between God's sovereignty and human responsibility, some have taught that the Christian must be passive in sanctification. But if one stresses the necessity of the Spirit's internal work in the believer without a corresponding emphasis on the equally important biblical teaching on the responsibility of the individual, the result can be the stunting of growth.

The stunting may take one of several forms. For example, a person may insist that because the Spirit is sovereign he is free to do what he likes, saying, "It doesn't matter what I do; I know that I am elect." [I've never actually met a person who genuinely believed this.]

Another person, taught that the Spirit will do everything to sanctify her, may begin to wonder at the lack of change in her life Having built up a series of expectations as to what the Spirit will do in her, she may even begin to blame God because these expectations have not been met . . .

A third possible result of a lack of emphasis on the believer's role may be unhealthy introspection. He begins to ask himself, "Am I elect?" . . . introspective questions and continual searchings within for signs of the Spirit's presence and work will only have the effect of undermining confidence in salvation." [Charlotte Mason said too much introspection was self-focused instead of others-focused.]

Being Human - ch 6 Balancing Our Lives with Needs of Others

This is something I've always wondered about. It's from chapter 6. First of all, the authors establish we're responsible for taking care of our own needs so we don't burden others.

"But it must be balanced with an equal emphasis on the interests of others. . . But another set of delicate and difficult questions arises. We live in a lost world, we are part of a fallen humanity. On every hand spiritual and physical needs, near at hand as well as distant, cry out for attention. In which direction does the Christian choose to move? Are the needs at hand more important than the needs far away, or vice versa? Care must be taken not to produce a continuous state of guilt. Every experience can be a source of self-recrimination: "Here I am eating this food when someone else is hungry." "Here I am in a comfortable bed when many are homeless" or "Here I am indulging in a luxury, going to a concert, when the money could have been used for those in physical need or for the spread of the gospel." Such guilt comes easily to any who feel deeply the needs of the world.

The opposite tendency, however, must also be guarded against. We are sinners still and, being selfish, we know only too well how to take care of our own interests. . .

How can we fulfill our responsibility to care for others, without allowing this responsibility to become oppressive? When is it right to give away money and when is it right to keep it? When is it right to take the energy and time to help someone who is going through a difficult experience psychologically, and when is it right instead to sit by the fire at home and read a book?

The most important thing to say is that there are no rules for such conduct. Scripture does not give us any, nor should we as Christians try to establish any. . . . Rather, what we must do is present with equal stress the two principles mentioned above: on the one hand, the validity of a proper interest in one's own experience and, on the other, the need to see and take care of the needs of others. . ."

That isn't a clear-cut answer to the question, but it's interesting nevertheless.

Went to a CM Conference

And now I'm back; I'll post about it later when I'm more alert. There was so much information, it's like information overload.

This is the conference where we were going to do the "Book Club" about the Being Human book, and that was fun, a highlight of the conference. I was telling Tim about it and the discussion we had around the table and the people there who had been influenced by some L'Abri teaching, and he said, 'It's nice to know there are people like that out there in the world.' The funny thing is - I had that exact same thought as I was sitting at the table during the book discussion!

I'm taking a break today, this is my "catch up on sleep and don't do anything mentally challenging" recovery day, so I won't be posting anything from the book today.

Being Human ch 4 Active Obedience

I somehow overlooked ch 4. It's about the need to walk in faith and actively strive to do the right thing rather than passively waiting to produce Christian fruit without doing anything. We're supposed to put in our own effort - and that effort is our attempt to do what the Bible says: to obey God's Law as outlined in both the Old and New Testaments.

"Why is it that practicing God's law brings freedom, blessing, life and peace? As we stressed in chapter one, humans are made like God; and the law, which is holy and good, describes what our lives are to be like in order for us to reflect God's character.* The law describes the way we are intended to live."

That means that the Law isn't a negative limit to our freedom and fun. Instead, it's what fulfills us. It's a positive thing.

* Chapters 1 and 2 established that reflecting God's image is the goal of the Christian life. Sometimes other things are emphasized as our goal (good works, street evangelism, suffering, etc) but those are secondary. Our purpose is to reflect God's image in all of its fullness and various facets.

One more from chapter 3

"Someone will say to a Christian, particulary a young Christian or one in difficulty, 'This is good, you've believed in Christ. But now, in order to show that you really have a relationship with God and are really living a spiritual life, you must experience. . . .' Depending on who is speaking, the blank will be filled with speaking in tongues, the baptism of the spirit, the second blessing, brokenness or what have you. The spiritual counselor continues, 'Then you will be sure of the Spirit's indwelling and have power. You will be able to witness and pray freely. Then you won't just believe that you have the Holy Spirit in you, you'll know by experience.' The result of this is exactly as Paul describes. The Christian is disqualified, robbed of assurance in Christ, and made to feel unspiritual, unfaithful, and in need of something extra--something more than and higher than the cross. . . by stressing a higher spiritualty beyond faith in Christ, this teaching implies that Christ and his death are only the gateway to a superspirituality."

This is the wrong way; the right way is to take God at His word, accept our new standing in Christ, and then attempt to live holy lives with the help of the Spirit. Our focus shouldn't be on seeking spiritual experiences, but on getting down to the business of living. At least, that's what I'm getting out of this.

Being Human quote from ch 2

This is from the section on Neo-Platonic influences on Christian thinking, which is deemed even more dangerous than materialism because it's so easy to make this sound Biblical, and then slide into a denial and rejection of the physical/mental qualities that make us human.

"This emphasis on God being beyond all knowledge is a fundamental characteristic of the mystical tradition of the church. This way of ignorance can only be pursued by removing sense and reason, by abandoning not only what is impure but even what is pure. (Later we will discuss the similar emphasis in some evangelicalism of this century on self-emptying, on brokenness, on the uselessness of the mind and doctrine, and on the removing even of what seems good in the self.)"

Ch 3: The Centrality of Christ

More from Being Human:

"To the extent that we forget that our status before God is due to what Christ has done for us, we will try to make our own relationship with God depend on winning his approval. Thinking that unless we fulfill certain obligations God will not love us, we begin to focus on what we have or have not done. We make an anxious search for internal evidences of our 'new life.' But doubts arise as to whether God really loves us. Then, as we realize we cannot possibly meet his standards, resentment builds up against God for making such strict demands. So our hearts gradually harden against him and obedience becomes more difficult. Joy, wonder and praise dry up. Instead, frustration and a sense of failure make us feel empty and sterile. . . . It is often at just this point that superspiritual teaching or some kind of second blessing emphasis may gain a foothold. . . Rather than seeking for something else, we should turn back thanfully to Christ and remind ourselves of who he is and what he has done for us. Ingratitude eatsway at one's whole life by producing spiritual drought and bitterness."

I've been guilty of this very thing. I wish I'd read this years ago!

More from Being Human book

I'm in chapter 3; I'll post something from ch 2 later.

The authors talk about asceticism (punishing the body by doing things like walking on nails, extreme fasting) and seeking experiential spirituality (paying with mantras to clear the mind and have a touch from God) as resulting from the combination of Christianity with Plato, which I don't quite follow (I might, if I understood more about Plato, or if I read ch 2 again more carefully - or, even better, if I paraphrased it into short sentences of single syllable words! :P)

Here's the quote:

"The goal of the Christian life is to be restored to God's likeness, to be holy as God is holy, to be like Christ in character. It is not primarily to have direct experiences of the spirit or to become a kind of spiritual athlete. Consequently, Paul says, these regulations imposed by the Colossians teachers [Col 2:22-23] and their contemporary counterparts have nothing whatsoever to do with genuine Christian growth and true spirituality. They are of no value in restraining the desires and practices of the sinful nature. These techniques and regulations arise from Platonism and the world view of the East where the goal of spirituality, union with the spiritual realm, is a consequence of turning away from the external world of people and things. The biblical goal is holiness of life, expressed primarily in the giving of ourselves in service to other people."

I like that - the goal of Christianity clarified. Mysticism and contemplative prayer sound appealing to me, but I see that he's including them with the kinds of things that Paul warned about in Col. 2. Those things cause us to stray from our real goal and aren't what real Christianity is about.

He uses quotes from a book called Encounter With God by Morton Kelsey, written 4 years earlier (1974) to show how Christians were being drawn to seek eastern methods in prayer, and I'm wondering if Kelsey was an early Emergent Church proponent, it sounds very much like what (little) I've read about that movement.