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?