Bella Art Girl and Mt. Hope Heidi

I have so much to post: thoughts, events, pictures (of course), but never enough time. This chronicle of our life is so important to me. It is something I have no desire to abandon. I look back at the years worth of posts (four and a half years!!!) and know without a doubt that I am glad to have spent time gathering and recording these word and images. And so I continue, finding minutes in the cracks of my days.

Then there are the friendships I’ve been blessed to cultivate through this crazy virtual world. Not virtual friendships, but real, life-giving friendships. Bella Art Girl, Maricel, is one of those dear friends. We’ve only met in person a few times, but she and I could talk rapidly without taking a breath for three days straight and not scratch the surface of what we want to share and contemplate together. Instead we had only three hours this past week. We are both in a season of life where we are, sometimes precariously, straddling the worlds of baby/toddlerhood, early childhood/beginning student, and rising/earnest student. We share so many family and educational ideals. It is just a joy to spend time together, even when we have to create time in the midst of overwhelmed schedules.

The dear even brought flowers, coffee cake, and hot chocolate! We ate, enjoyed spending time outside in the beautiful weather, and talked, and talked, and talked. I felt absolutely renewed and refreshed by our time together (which is saying a great deal for this introvert!).

I wish Maricel had a public blog, but her husband, Tucker, has been posting some phenomenal stuff for Circe Institute and the Classical Conversations blog. You can also find his writings at his own blog, Satellite Saint. My absolute favorite lately was his article Leaving Behind the Adolescent Self. Very, very convicting, as I often feel extraordinarily adolescent in this parenting and educating journey.

This is hard work, but what haunts me is that the gap I may need to close is not so much a knowledge or method gap as a character gap. In other words, am I trying to teach my children to become virtuous while I, myself, remain largely an adolescent in my values? If by virtuous we mean something akin to becoming the kind of people we ought to be, then I am failing miserably. And really, how hard have I tried? It is frightening that the idea of seeking virtue, and correspondingly, that education should be about cultivating virtue, was never in scope for my entire educational career; it just was not on the radar. Could it be that, while I seek to create a classical education for my children, I and my adolescent mind are the main roadblock to its success?