Books of 2020 and a Remnant of Readers

With two moves, house renovations, house selling, and countless traveling, I kept my 2020 reading goal to a manageable twenty-four for the year. Plus, I process slowly and like to linger on them a bit. As a #rabbittrailreader I’ve possibly read triple this in words and pages and chapters, but it’s been good and needed for me to set a small goal of books to actually finish (I use the Goodreads Reading Challenge).

I was curiously observing some frantic discussions recently, centered around current political climates and fears of book bans and all manner of inevitable suppression and whatnot because of things read in a forum here or an article there. It wearied me, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. After all, I’d probably be all #keepyourhandsoffmybooks if this truly became a problem and it’ll always be incredibly important to me that my children have access to books that are good and true and beautiful.

My husband sent this though, and I found it poignant:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

—Neil Postman

…I tend to think it’s the latter we ought to be worrying more about these days. The information overload and conjectures on all sides, continuous stimuli for fight and flight, never-ending opinions from all, each touted as truth. No time, energy, or desire to read good books because of hours and minds too filled by current events and information-overload. We’ll either rely on everyone else for knowledge or think we already have it all.

I’m personally thinking it’s the perfect day to curl up with a cup of tea, a good book, and remind myself that I have unfettered access to the Truth that will outlast all of this.

As I set my goals for this year, what books are you eyeing for 2021?

My 2020 Books:

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A Hymn for 2020

I realize no one has made me in charge of such things, but I’m just gonna go ahead and re-name this: “The Hymn for 2020.”

“A Hymn: A Prayer for Forgiveness and Deliverance⠀

O God of earth and altar,⠀
bow down and hear our cry,⠀
our earthly rulers falter,⠀
our people drift and die;⠀
the walls of gold entomb us,⠀
the swords of scorn divide,⠀
take not thy thunder from us,⠀
but take away our pride.⠀

From all that terror teaches,⠀
from lies of tongue and pen,⠀
from all the easy speeches⠀
that comfort cruel men,⠀
from sale and profanation⠀
of honor, and the sword,⠀
from sleep and from damnation,⠀
deliver us, good Lord!⠀

Tie in a living tether⠀
the prince and priest and thrall,⠀
bind all our lives together,⠀
smite us and save us all;⠀
in ire and exultation⠀
aflame with faith, and free,⠀
lift up a living nation, ⠀
a single sword to thee.”

-G.K. Chesterton, 1906⠀

My husband stumbled on it earlier this year in my Chesterton book of poems (because #readapoemaday) and I haven’t quite shaken it off.

**Vintage artwork shown was done by Chesterton’s pal Tolkien. One of many original illustrations that accompanied The Hobbit manuscript when he submitted it to his publisher in 1936. Check out this amazing book for more of them.

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How We Homeschool, Charlotte Mason, and A Gentle Feast

I don’t generally cover much of our homeschooling here, but I’ve been getting so many questions on it during these crazy days of pandemic schooling I thought it would be helpful to have a place for some of the information to live so I could point towards it in these days to come.

In an effort to keep this from being needlessly lengthy I’m going to link where possible to things that have already been said.

Most of our schooling tends to be within the bounds of the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education. Mason was an early childhood school teacher, a college teacher in elementary learning methods, and an educational author before she formed what was originally a union for home schooling mothers, the Parents National Education Union (PNEU), in 1891. 

One of my first introductions to Charlotte Mason was within the pages of For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (one of Francis and Edith Schaeffer’s daughters). I won’t expand on Mason’s philosophy here, but you can read on it here or here (the gist of it: living books rather than textbooks; short lessons; habits; nature study and play; art and music appreciation; and a natural yet deep approach to language, through copywork, narration, and dictation).

The more we homeschooled, the more I realized how wonderful of a fit it was for us as it organically focuses on so many of the things I wanted to be a part of our education such as literature, critical thinking, education as life, nature, beauty and wonder, good habits, and caring for the whole child. This post really mirrors my experiences and describes why I’ve come to love CM-style schooling.

We used Ambleside Online (AO) for years and it was a great place to dive into excellent books and begin learning little-by-little how to incorporate many of these elements into our days. I’m really thankful for it.

As our number of kids to be schooled increased and our available time decreased (due to multiple moves and renovations one after the other), we stumbled upon a more complete homeschooling curriculum A Gentle Feast (AGF). It was supposed to be a temporary time-saving switch during the craziness, but here we are years later and we haven’t looked back! While we loved AO, it took significantly more work to pull everything together and implement (especially with more than one or two kids in different years), and as a result many things I think were important often fell by the wayside. AGF has been so much easier for schooling multiple children together and providing us with a ready-to-implement curriculum, schedules, and resources at our fingertips.

Many ask about how it compares with Ambleside Online and Simply Charlotte Mason (SCM) and you can read more in-depth on that here but my personal opinion is that AO wasn’t quite enough (without a lot of effort), SCM is too much (very structured and hard to modify/swap out books), while AGF is just right. I tweak the schedule to suit us (we do 4 days a week and take a “Sabbath week” off after every six-week term), I can easily substitute books as needed, I spend so much less time on planning and managing, and we do a lot more things together as a family (morning time, scripture memorization, artist/composer/poet study, hymns and folk songs, tales, and much of our history/science).

Here’s how you start (I’ll do another post later on how we implement and use it daily):

1. Visit A Gentle Feast and pick your Cycle. There are four that you’ll cycle through as a family over the course of your childrens’ education, getting more in-depth each time as they get older. In brief:

  • Cycle 1 (“Columbus, Conquests, and Colonies”) covers 1000-1650 AD, with grades 5-12 also covering Early Civilizations for ancient history
  • Cycle 2 (“Wars, Whigs, and Washington”) covers 1650-~1800 AD, with grades 5-12 also covering The Greeks for ancient history
  • Cycle 3 (“Reforms, Revolutions, and Reconstruction”) covers 1800-1900 AD, with grades 5-12 also covering Ancient Rome for ancient history
  • Cycle 4 (“Marvels, Machines, & Modern Times”) covers 1900-present, with grades 5-12 also covering Early Middle Ages for ancient history

*It’s recommended you start with Cycle 1, but if you don’t you’ll still work through them all eventually. I’m a visual person, so you can see this in a graphic at the very bottom of this post

2. Decide if you want the main curriculum in a print or digital format.

This is the “meat” of the system. Schedules, assignments, exam questions, book lists, resources list, links, support groups, online resources, etc.

If you select it in a printed format, you get a hardcopy teacher’s manual (TM). The TM is not an absolute necessity and only comes with the printed version but I find it helpful as well as beautiful (various components within the TM are available individually in your online resources account with the digital version but not as a full digital pdf manual), so I always buy the printed TM with everything else in digital (both versions still include digital/online resources). The printed TM includes background and overview of everything, instructions, and printed schedules for the whole year all in one handy book (with space for lists and notes). It’s like a lovely spiral hardcopy planner. I also love the printed version because I can see all forms together in the schedules which really helps with our family schooling (the digital versions are broken out by form).

Other resources that come with it include a robust online section with editable schedules and plans, book list for that cycle (available to buy separately, but included with your curriculum purchase), links to corresponding videos, exam questions, printables, videos, monthly calls, and much more.

3. Determine what “forms” all of your children will be in. This is kind of a fancy way of saying what grade they’re in (but I much prefer it to our numbered grades that change every year):

  • Form 1: Lower Elementary (Grades 1-3)
  • Form 2: Upper Elementary (Grades 4-6)
  • Form 3: Junior High (Grades 7-9)
  • Form 4: Senior High (Grades 10-12)

I love the flexibility here. The Teachers’ Manual, schedules, morning time, and resources are provided for ALL FORMS so everything is there for all my children together at no additional cost. If a book seems a little above or below my child’s particular level, no biggie, I can see higher and lower options and switch accordingly. I have a dyslexic child who struggles with reading but her comprehension is wonderful, so I can progress her to form 2 in most things and form 1 for others. I moved one ambitious child up to a higher form this year and kept another child at his form for an extra year because I didn’t feel he was ready (but still mix between form 2/3 books throughout the year). Don’t feel tied to your form.

*Another secret, I’ve since started schooling everyone under high school together and it’s been amazing. I simply pick whichever books for each subject, across all forms, that I think would be the best for everyone and we read them aloud together (using LibriVox and audiobooks wherever possible). AGF makes it really easy to pull it off. I really need to do a whole post just on this.

4. Select which additional components you’d like included.

The options are:

  • Morning Time Bundle
  • Language Arts (LA) Packets OR Reading Programs (if not yet a strong reader)
  • Cursive and Manuscript Handwriting Programs

I’ve used all of these at different times. You can purchase them all printed or I usually purchase the digital formats to re-use and print/spiral bind myself as needed.

The LA packets are consumable for each child and include all of their Language Arts in one book broken out by day for the whole year. This was a game-changer for me and what initially sold me on the whole curriculum. They can be purchased in manuscript or cursive font. Based on form (I stick to their ability level regardless of what form books we’re reading), and it provides daily assignments for each week (many based on their book readings) in:

  • Copywork, grammar, dictation, spelling, composition, and drawing…all in one simple spiral book

The Morning Time (MT) resources are beautiful. We can print out the works of art we are studying, link to hymns, poems, etc., and it has our family morning time schedule for the whole year:

  • Bible and “Beauty Loop” (Artist/Composer study, Poetry Recitation, Poet study, Fables/Hero Tales, and Hymn Study).

There are also alternatives provided for poets, composers, artists, and hymns so as you progress through the cycles in future years you won’t repeat them. NOTE: If you don’t want to purchase, you can still access basic MT plans and links in your full curriculum online resources, but you won’t get the pdfs with all the lovely printable student and teacher packets/pages (that we put in our menus mentioned below in my summary).

Other optional add-ons are the cursive and manuscript handwriting programs and two levels of beginner reading programs (100 Gentle Lessons in Sight & Sound Levels 1 or Level 2).

NOTE: You would generally use the handwriting programs as needed in addition to your student’s LA packet, while the Sight & Sounds Reading programs would be used until they are a comfortable reader before they begin using a LA packet. Some children skip the reading programs and go right to the LA, some only need to do the Level 1 reading program, some need both before moving to the LA (check the samples provided or I’m happy to send, to help determine your child’s level).

5. Buy (or borrow/download) your books!

This is what’s called a “living books” curriculum in that there are no dry textbooks and worksheets, but excellent books that bring your children right to the source of what we’re learning about. It takes so much pressure off of me since I don’t have to waste time attempting to teach things they can get right from the experts 😉

Many are classics that we already have (or ought to have anyhow) in our personal library. We get many at library sales. You can do kindle/e-books, borrow, check out, or buy used. Tons are at archive.org and we listen to many together for free via LibriVox.

Your booklist will list out your Morning Time books, Curriculum books by subject and term, free reads, optional books, read-alouds, math suggestions, etc. (I recommend using the editable booklist in your Online Resources, it’s easier to browse). Thriftbooks and the bargain bin at Better World Books are my top places to purchase.

To summarize, here’s what I have/use:

  • Teacher’s Manual (covers everything for everyone) and the included online resources
  • Morning Time resources and printouts. I buy clear plastic menus (MT GAME-CHANGER), put my MT schedules and printables in mine, put each child’s printouts in theirs (poems, hymns, verses, etc.), and have a few extras with the artworks we’re studying that term. Even the 5yo has her own little version:)
  • Language Arts packet, printed and consumable for each child able to read
  • Books gathered from the provided booklist for each child (for the next term or full year if ambitious). Multiple children in the same form can share books
  • Math curriculum of your choice (only thing not included, which I’m glad for since math is so specific to needs/abilities)
  • Supplies. Other than our books, we basically just get a composition notebook, sketchbook/nature journal, a clipboard (I like to give them each their own weekly schedule to work through) and some colored pencils/pencils and we’re pretty much set!
  • AGF extras. As mentioned, I purchased the manuscript and cursive handwriting packet that I print/bind each year for whichever child needs it. I also purchased and printed/bound the 100 Gentle Lessons early reading program which I re-use for whichever child is learning how to read until they’re ready to move up to the Language Arts packet.

I hope that firehose of information helps. I’ll try to answer questions and update/edit here as I’m able. Julie, the creator of AGF was kind enough to pass on a coupon for me to share. Just click through here and enter the code Bonnie10 during checkout (P.S. and I buy my curriculum just like everybody else). [UPDATE: coupon has expired, but I’ll update if I receive a new one].

I will also say that every week, every year it gets better. Rhythms become more second-nature, implementation gets smoother and smoother, and we just are able to dig deeper each time around. In closing, I’ve found that A Gentle Feast provides the depth, beauty, and yet simplicity that I look for in schooling. It is thorough, yet holistic and I’m truly thankful to have stumbled upon it.

“Now, thought breeds thought. It is as vital thought touches our minds that our own ideas are vitalized in the contact, and out of our ideas comes our conduct of life. That is why the direct and immediate impact of great minds upon his own mind is a necessary factor in the education of a child. If you want to know how far a given school lays itself out to furnish its scholars with the material for opinions, ask to see the list of books in reading during the current term.”

-Charlotte M. Mason, The Parents Review (1910)

Teachers’ Manual

Morning Time Resources

Language Arts Packets (I haven’t printed mine out yet)

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On Covenants and the Common Good: Toward a Renewed Politics

[Originally posted Here at Mere O]

Only a few paragraphs into Genesis and the age-old tensions between the individual and society are already beginning to emerge. The story begins with one Individual formed in the image of God, with individual dignity and worth. Yet it is not good for man to be alone and the first community is formed. By the hand of God someone once singular was made plural, then joined right back together again by a covenant and a command to remain one and yet multiply. This beautiful, albeit enigmatic tension was born, then asked to birth more. And in one bite followed by another, individual choices were made that led not only to individual and immediate consequences, but societal and far-reaching ones. The very tension woven by its Maker, seemingly unraveling beyond repair. Yet it remained. Wrought with enmity, but commanded to carry on.

Society grew, and its birthing pains only increased. The tensions that began in marriage carried on through family then tribes then nations then humanity.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in “Individual and Collective Responsibility,” draws our attention to the Flood, brought about by the violence and anarchy that occurs when society is sacrificed on the altar of the individual, and the Tower of Babel disaster, brought about by the tyranny and oppression that occurs when individuals are sacrificed on the altar of society. He claims that “The Flood tells us what happens to civilisation when individuals rule and there is no collective. Babel tells us what happens when the collective rules and individuals are sacrificed to it.”

We seem destined to repeat this disastrous pendulum swing, ad infinitum, until God steps in. Out of the post-Babel wreckage of disunity and disarray, he calls upon an individual, Abram, to form a new community that revolved neither around the individual nor the collective, but what Sacks describes as “a new form of social order that would give equal honour to the individual and the collective, personal responsibility and the common good.”

And a covenant was “cut”—the Brit Bein Habetarim, or “ Covenant of Parts.” And Abram, like Adam, fell into a deep sleep as God walked through that which had been separated. Abram, like Adam, was told to multiply, yet this time God himself would take care of the math. Abram and Sarai stepped out of the darkness in faith, trading barren wombs and severed flesh for offspring like the stars, an everlasting land of promise, and the opportunity to share their blessings with all of humanity—the future restoration of the unity destroyed at Babel. God was throwing us a literal life-line: Give up your individual and collective toiling and striving that keeps breaking you, join my covenant, and Iwill accomplish great things through you, and for you. I will save you from yourselves.

This shows us how covenants can transform both the singular individual and the collective society. It can provide both with common values, purpose, identity, stability, and shared strength through shared sacrifice. They’re held together not by self-interest or force, but fidelity and faith.

As the Israelites passed from slavery through the waters of the Red Sea into a covenant of freedom through fidelity, so the believer passes from death through the waters of baptism into a covenant of life through faith. A covenant with the Trinity itself, culminating on the day of Pentecost when the curse of Babel was dissolved and rather than “one lip” united for evil there could now be one lip (one “pure lip” as prophesied by Zephaniah) united for good through the covenantal sign of the Spirit. Abraham’s far off promise of unity is now offered to the entire world.

A Covenantal God

Christianity must be understood covenantally because that’s how God has chosen to relate to humankind. Biblical scholar Thomas Schreiner defines a covenant as “a chosen relationship in which two parties make binding promises to each other.” Over and again, we see covenants as a means of God demonstrating who he is, binding himself to his people and creation, providing a means of flourishing, limiting and hedging in destruction, and forging paths of reconciliation between humanity and himself. Herman Bavinck reminds us that “God is the God of the covenant;” it’s what joins us through the infinite distance to God, not as a master and a slave but in comunion and friendship—it’s “the essence of true religion.”

Covenants Distorted and Broken

But we like to take what is covenantal and make it hierarchical. We reduce it to its lowest common denominator; to a contract riddled with loopholes giving us an out. But a covenant is freely chosen, not forced; relational, not contractual. By its very nature, it counteracts hierarchy, power grabs, hoarding, oppression, discrimination, and abuse. It fights fear.

In Os Guinness’s upcoming book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, he describes a covenant as, “promise keeping and trust writ large and made lasting. It is the trust that underlies all healthy families and all good relationships now expanded to become the foundation of an entire society, and even a nation. A covenant is a commitment that makes life worth living and enables life to be lived well. It is a word of honor given at a point in time that binds together past, present, and future, making possible lasting love, enduring freedom, flourishing lives, and a healthy community.”

When our world, our communities, our news feeds, our families, and our thoughts fill with fear, like frightened animals we fight and fly. We forget we are more than animals. We forget we have souls that can be eternally covenanted with the One whose words spoke us into being and whose very breath made us more than dust. Because dirt plus the breath of God, is a life intrinsically and individually valuable because it was breathed upon and imprinted with his very image—the face we cannot see. Imprinted in unique ways with the potential to be. To become an individual reflection of him, breathlessly magnified and intensified when covenanted together. The God who values and makes valuable, created us so that our worth is as an individual but our purpose is through a community.

The Greek root of “Devil” is derived from “dia-balein”: to throw apart, to scatter. Satan hates unity because he knows those beautiful reflections of God joined together in one voice and one accord would destroy him. He could never gaze upon the face of a unified Church, filled with the Spirit of God, and survive. It will end him.

Unity is the breath of the Church. We suffocate without it. Its necessity mirrors not just the glory, but the necessity of the Trinity. God is Unum, Bonum, Verum, Pulchrum—Unity, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty—and so must his Church be.

Covenants Absent, Forgotten, and Unseen

Reinhold Niebuhr argues that humans tend to lack the rationality and moral imagination to extend empathy beyond a certain point. So when we see fear, anger, death, destruction, and unmet needs further from us than our screens or our circles, we resort to tribalism and we throw platitudes. Well, “Jesus is the answer” we say. Maybe if others behaved better or worked harder or made better choices, we say. Vote differently, we say. Yet, here we are, nursing and feeding our babies, caring for our parents, fighting for our marriages, working our vocations, advocating for our child’s IEP or education, tending our gardens, or listening to a friend bare her soul. Why? Because whether we realize it or not, we are covenanted to those things and that leads us to action. We care about what we are bound to. Niebuhr suggests some form of “social coercion” to bridge the chasm between our circles and others, rather, I believe covenanting—freely offered—is the only way to effectively and lastingly graft the two.

We forget what Walter Brueggemann describes as our first tastes of “covenanting,” as infants experiencing the omnipotence of an other (in this case, mother) slowly developing a sense of self and learning the act of “othering” which requires the ability to both assert and surrender. We don’t see how our marriages, our deep friendships, our children, even our gardens, all providentially give us glimpses of what a covenantal relationship ought to look like. That far off promise whispered to Abram on that clear night, as brilliant as the stars, yet as touchable as his wife and his baby boy and the dirt beneath his feet.

We must look to our existing covenants to remember what covenant-keeping means and looks like. How the life of our marriage is dependent on the life of its entities. Unable to live if one dies. Unable to flourish against the atrophy of the other. How our children cannot grow to discover who they were created to be if we don’t feed them, and learn their struggles and gifts, and put them to bed, and keep them from dying.

Covenants Misunderstood

Covenants build bonds that run deeper than politics, denominations, race, or even kinship. They are the blueprints handed to us by our Creator and modeled by the Trinity. In fact, if our lines and points neatly match up with the outlines of any group or person who did not make us, we’re likely being unfaithful to the most important Covenant of all, and party to a dying contract that will never bring life and flourishing to our story or this world.

Here’s the thing that should strip us of excuses—we don’t even have to agree with what someone believes or does to covenant with them. It’s not unequally yoking, it’s not being of the world, it’s reflecting the God who was willing to covenant with us. It’s why Jesus loved his enemies, broke bread with sinners, and forgave those who killed him. It’s why we’ve been given so much and are told to give it away freely. It’s why every Christian should be able to say to each and every person before us: I see you, I care for you, I love you, I will hold what I’ve been given with an open hand so youdon’t have to be so fearful, because I have the best reason of all to never fear.

We worry it may bolster a political party not our own, Christians we don’t think are theologically sound, a cause we don’t want to advance. It seems messy and uncomfortable. It felt threatening to the world Jesus was born into as well. It didn’t mesh with how they pictured God’s kingdom being built. “Follow me,” he assured them. In doing so, we are led along the way that often looks like weakness and feels like a death of sorts, but it’s the strongest, most life-producing thing we could do. It’s not sitting still and it’s not conquering. It’s both surrendering and asserting. Covenanting with those around us allows them to taste and see the source of holiness, peace, justice, mercy, and love.

The Call of the Church

Where covenants are absent, fear is present; but where covenants are made and kept, faith and trust can grow.

We are tribal creatures. Tribalism kills, but it also protects. What if we were part of a tribe that anyone could find a home in? Be fed in, seen, protected, valued, and loved in? A tribe bound together by a covenant with the very One who created us each and sees us as who we could be both individually and collectively? We can be and it’s called the Church. And if our churches don’t look like that and we don’t look like that, we are not living by the Spirit and covenanting in the image of God. We must lament and repent.

Why We Lament

We lament because not one of us has kept our covenants perfectly—not our covenant that grafts us onto Life, our covenant that binds us to the Church, our covenant to serve and preserve the land, and especially not our covenants that connect us to others providing the conduits for that Life to spread and draw them to its source.

We lament because we have not cared for the whole body of the Church. We have forgotten that if one part suffers, every part suffers .

We lament because we have cared about property more than people and we’ve reduced people to property. We are unwilling to look others in the face or through our screens and see the unique fingerprints of God upon them.

We lament because we have not yet gone to the ends of the earth, bringing the source of life and flourishing to every corner. Carrying his breath to the dying. Bringing the temple to them.

We lament because we have broken our covenant to bless humanity through us, to be a city on a hill, the salt of the world, a light in the darkness. We have not lived out the very words God whispered to Abram on that starry night.

We lament because we respond to the weeping and gnashing of those broken by our broken or non-existent covenants, with “Go and be well fed.” “Choose peace” we say. “Choose life” we say. We offer words that cost us nothing; doing nothing to feed them, pursue peace, or help them imagine how to live and not feel so powerless. Nothing that would lead them to the well of peace, provision, and strength.

We lament because we make excuses to not do what’s right. We say justice and mercy are replacing the gospel, forgetting they’re intrinsically intertwined. That if justice and mercy aren’t pouring out, it’s not truly the gospel. If justice and mercy are built upon anything less, they will fail. One cannot live, while the other dies.

We lament because we’ve reduced the gospel to a few bullet points on how to get to heaven when we die, forgetting that it’s actually about a new way to live here—the offer of a covenant that grafts us to Life and severs us from Death.

How the Church Can Change the World

God’s kingdom was inaugurated with a covenant and it’s the act of covenanting that will build it and bring it. Here and now. There’s no other way. Jesus didn’t embrace death so he could dole out life, like individual stimulus handouts, enabling us to survive alone and build our own tiny little “saved” kingdoms. He chose to surrender to Death, going where it had no choice but to look upon his face—knowing it could never survive. Knowing we could never survive, much less flourish, if Death lived.

With not an “I do” but rather a barren soul that accepts his “I have done”—one breath, one body, one flesh—and our contract with Death is shattered. A new creation and a new covenant arise from the dust, and once again the breath of the Spirit gives us life. Life that Death no longer has claim to. This covenant finally resolves the tension between the individual and community. We are forever bound to something greater and bigger than ourselves that will finally allow us to become who we were created to be.

It seems these days more than ever, that the world is falling apart. And it is. But every cry and every failure of the world is a calling and a requirement for the Church to show them a better way. We are being given an opportunity to individually and corporately lament, repent, and seek the Spirit of the living God to do a work in us and through us, walking in the footsteps of Jesus. The Church, of whom every believer is bound to and part of, is called upon to change the world. Not because wecan, but because we are covenanted with and filled by the only one who is able. Because the God who made creation good, can and will redeem it, restore it, and make it good again, and he longs to begin his work through us.

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A Rambling Reader, and ‘What We’re Reading’

I’ve posted before about being a rabbit-trail-reader. You know, where one book leads to another and then another, a conversation leads to four new topics, a chapter leads to twelve new thoughts, a quote or foreword leads to another author, a book review leads to another addition, then repeat, ad infinitum. Though rabbit trails, imply going around in circles leading nowhere, so perhaps a “rambling reader” is more appropriate? I mean, I get to all sorts of places, but the expediency of arriving to the last page in a timely manner is certainly hindered! Every so often though, I try to take a good look at my random, seemingly disconnected stack, and think over how they got there (often providentially) and where they’ve taken me so far…

The Sun Also Rises, began a few months ago, because my husband, Kevin, loves Hemingway. Hemingway provides him with a nostalgic juxtaposition of prior hopelessness to our current hope. I started it at the beginning of winter during a hard season where I was struggling to grasp the closeness and personal love of God. Let’s just say, Hemingway may not be the best read during a winter depression, so it was temporarily shelved until warmer days.

Studying the galaxy with my kids around the same time, led me to Carl Sagan’s, Pale Blue Dot (it has one of my very favorite quotes I’ll have to do a whole post about one of these days). I’m telling you, one of the best ways to grasp the vastness of God is to read a brilliant atheist describe how unfathomably tiny we are in relation to the cosmos. It’s fascinating.

The next step, I figured, in filling the gap between a vast God and our tiny selves, is a study of the Holy Spirit. Forgotten God, by Francis Chan, is a great, quick read to start with, though not quite the depth I needed, which then led to a few weightier books on the topic. I already had Meredith Kline’s, Images of the Spirit on my shelf, so I dove in while awaiting a few more that are on the way. Any other recommendations on this topic?

A Room Called Remember, has been on my shelf forever, and so beautifully says things we need to hear. I pulled it out at the perfect time, because I’d be hard pressed to think of anyone better than Frederick Buechner to describe the hope that Hemingway and Sagan overlooked

A perfectly-timed, sunny trip in the middle of December resulted in a few more additions, including the raw, but beautiful, A Grief Observed. It may seem like an odd vacation read, but Kevin and I usually read Shelden Vanauken’s,  A Severe Mercy (our favorite book) on vacations together, and this seemed like a logical sequel in many ways. L’Engle did the foreword, which led me to, Circle of Quiet, and we quickly devoured her ramblings on writing, creativity, and ontological selves. So good. Andrew Peterson’s, Adorning the Dark, is a great complement to these topics as he discusses creativity and callings in a dark world (I’m only a few chapters in).

My 8th grader is reading my copy of Annie Dillard’s, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, for school, so I snagged, Teaching a Stone to Talk, for fifty-cents at a library sale, to fill the Dillard void in my stack until he’s done. I always try to have some poetry going, so I invested in Mary Oliver’s, Devotions, collection, because the way she humbly observes the stark beauty of creation reminds me of Dillard.

Last Call for Liberty, was from last year’s stack, but Os Guinness is working on somewhat of a sequel, and he shared the introduction with us spurring many discussions on freedom, liberty, and it’s relation to the Exodus of Israel, and I had to re-visit it. Os recommended Stefan Zweig’s, Messages from a Lost World. A Jewish writer who fled Germany during the rise of Hitler, and his chapter on, “The Secret of Artsitic Creation,” complements L’Engle in an interesting way. An atheist attempting to navigate the ugliness of war and the depressing future of humanity with the beauty of artistic creation is fascinating. I had just begun Reinhold Niebuhr’s book, The Children of Light an the Children of Darkness, based on a Trinity Forum recommendation (founded by Os in 1991), and only a few pages in, it already added to our discussions on democracy and freedom within the framework of order. This same idea was likewise wonderfully alluded to in L’Engle’s discussion of art (“we are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death”).

Don’t you love when so many unrelated books you’re reading, by people of all different faiths and backgrounds and centuries, mirror such similar ideas? Truth transcends time and space.

The rest were our read-alouds. Kevin has been reading, Swallowdale, to our oldest who has already read all of Arthur Ransome’s, Swallows and Amazons series, but they’ve always enjoyed slowly re-reading them together. I don’t know why I had put off, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as a read-aloud for so long, but the girls and I read a large, beautifully illustrated (though unabridged) copy snagged from the same library sale, and they absolutely loved it. We’re in the middle of, A Little Princess, now and they are equally engaged. There’s just something about the way Frances Hodgson Burnett, gives them characters who so innocently exhibit goodness amongst badness, that provides them with an attainable, simple, and tangible “good vs evil” in a hard and dark world; in ways even the youngest can comfortably grasp and yearn for (her, Little Lord Fauntleroy, has long been a family favorite for this very reason).

Any other additions you’d recommend adding to our current rambling stack?

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The Holiness of Beauty

“If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual than living in starkness and ugliness, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation” (Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking).

The holiness of beauty is something I haven’t always grasped.

I spent my younger days chasing after beauty at the expense of truth. When truth was finally something I could no longer ignore, I assumed the righteous thing to do was forsake beauty. I was often discouraged that many of my interests seemed so unspiritual… art and literature and the sea and my love for making homes out of drab, old spaces.

The irony of it all, was that I don’t think I was able to truly grasp the beauty of truth until I learned to see the holiness of beauty. It brought theology to life for me.

And it’s one of the biggest things I yearn to teach my children. Because I want them to see God whether they’re singing a hymn in church, or watching the sun set, or enjoying life with a friend, or staring at a mountain, or sketching a lady bug, or walking through a museum full of masterpieces, or reading an excellently told story, or observing their granddad skillfully build a house or a table…

Because beauty always points to the One whom it reflects.

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