Easter Celebration

[Lola told me that she was a little hatching egg.]

Truth.

[The chalkboard is Ilex’s freehand artistry.]

Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going

How was your Easter?

We had a lovely day at church and with family. I have a bunch of pictures in the queue to share, but we were also in the middle of packing for outdoor school with the boys so I didn’t have a chance to go through them and get them posted. Tomorrow.

We (Russ, the boys, and I) left for outdoor school Monday morning (Lola stayed with my parents). I have a bunch to share about that. Friday.

For now, I’ll just say Oregon in April is a great time to experience all sorts of weather. Sun. Rain. Snow (yep). Rain. Rain.

After two nights, we hiked back to the trail head at noon today.

Internet. Dr. Pepper. Hot shower. Dry clothes. Hallelujah.

Then I picked up my sick, feverish baby girl.

 

And now, on the docket:

Laundry. Laundry. Laundry.

Leif’s last night of AWANAS

Grocery shopping

Finish writing samples for charter school

Read book (ha!)

Book Club

Blogging with pictures

Online Meeting

Swim Meet

End of Year Program for Classical Conversations

Champoeg State Park field trip

Choir Performance at assisted living facility

End of Year Program for AWANAS

Choir Dress Rehearsal

Swim Meet

Bridal Shower

Evening Choir Performance

 

That will get us through Sunday of next week. And I’m PRAYING Lola gets better quickly and the boys don’t get sick.

Then, it’s nose to the grindstone for CC Practicum preparation. This year’s theme is Cultivating the Conversation: The Art of Rhetoric. Our Oregon practicum season begins in Salem, May 19-21. Will you join me?

Rend Thy Chains

An Explosion of Color

More From Memory Lane

Holly and I were the “Poncho Gnomes.” I’m the cute, stubby one.

I’m so impressed that we had birthday cakes this year. Shannon was born (Mom’s 3rd c-section) just a week or two before this next picture.

I’m fairly certain this next (terrifyingly large) picture was taken in second grade. The year I famously told my mom I did have a positive attitude. I was positive it would be terrible.

This is the log cabin playhouse my dad built for us…still in the construction phase. It had a sleeping loft and we spent whole summers in our own little cabin world.

And the three sisters…

What We’ve Been Reading

Reading a book is a profoundly personal, intimate thing. ‘Tis true that no two people read the same book, because each person brings to the story her own emotions, her fears, her experiences, her personality, her dreams and hopes. We each see the world through a different lens. A person may identify with a specific character—not necessarily the same character as the next reader.

And are we not different people ourselves at different points in our own lives? Have you read a book in one season and loved it, and hated it a decade later? Or vice versa?

This truth makes recommending a book a difficult, tentative sort of act.

A good friend of mine hated the character Jayber Crow. And she hated Peace Like a River. [gasp!] Another friend hated The Count of Monte Cristo. A few of my friends hated The Giver. I’m positive that more than a few of my friends and readers would dislike The Little French Girl (one of my favorites), but it is an obscure book that no one reads so I don’t have to hear about it. [chuckle]

I hated Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. With passion. And I almost didn’t make it through the first thirteen chapters of Jane Eyre.

A reader recommended The History of Love, and I decided to give it a try. I didn’t love it, but the story drew me in and it certainly fell in the realm of “witness”—after reading I felt as if I had been a witness to the lives of the narrators, alternately an older man and a young girl, which reminded me of the most delightful The Elegance of the Hedgehog. But rather than visiting a Parisian apartment, I witnessed a Polish Jew living through and past World War II and on to an elderly, forgotten life in New York.

Several magical passages caused me to stop and linger and savor. Humorous. Melancholy.

"As a child my mother and my aunts used to tell me that I would grow up to *become* handsome. It was clear to me that I wasn't anything to look at then, but I believed that some measure of beauty might come to me eventually. I don't know what I thought: that my ears, which stuck out at an undignified angle, would recede, that my head would somehow grow to fit them? That my hair, not unlike a toilet brush in texture, would, with time, unkink itself and reflect light? That my face, which held so little promise--eyelids as heavy as a frog's, lips on the thin side--would somehow transform itself into something not regrettable? For years I would wake up in the morning and go to the mirror, hoping...The year of my Bar Mitzvah I was visited by a plague of acne that stayed for four years. But still I continued to hope. As soon as the acne cleared my hairline began to recede, as if it wanted to disassociate itself from the embarrassment of my face. My ears, pleased with the new attention they now enjoyed, seemed to strain farther into the spotlight. My eyelids dropped--some muscle tension had to give to support the struggle of the ears--and my eyebrows took on a life of their own, for a brief period achieving all anyone could have hoped for them, and then surpassing those hopes and approaching Neanderthal."

And

“The War ended. Bit by bit, Litvinoff learned what had happened to his sister Miriam, and to his parents, and to four of his other siblings…He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom. To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, praying it wouldn’t choose that moment to sit on his face. At night, when he closed his eyes, he felt it looming above him.”

Oh, but then I picked up Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World by N.D. Wilson. A whirlwind of powerful imagery from beginning to end. I’ve never had such a burning desire to seek a terrifying storm and stand, vulnerable and joy-filled, in the deluge. (Or at least watch Planet Earth—glorious, spectacular filming—with the kids…)

"This universe is a portrait in motion, a *compressed* portrait in motion, a miniature, inevitably stylized, for it is trying to capture the Infinite. The galaxies are each one fraction of a syllable in a haiku of the Ultimate. On the human level, art is all recompression, attempts at taking a sunset from the small frame of the horizon and putting it on a postcard; taking a blues riff, the rhythmic vibration of strings, and capturing a sense of loss; marble, chiseled and shaped until it shows nobility..."

And

“How many quarks are out there, splashing around in this storm? How many vowels are in a hurricane? This wet strength, so enormous beside our small arms, is itself only a tiny corner of the spoken world, a tiny corner of this poem. Bigger breakers swirl in Jupiter’s eye, but who sees them? Starts and worlds twist in solar storms. This storm is nothing, and I am less. But to an infinite artist, a Creator in love with His craft, there is no unimportant corner, there is no thrown-away image, no tattered thread in the novel left untied.

“This ocean, tiny in the universe, is here because it’s beautiful. This word, these words that keep surging and crashing and grinding against the contrast of cliffs, they are strong and guttural, like the taste of Anglo-Saxon. This is poetry, but it is not delicate and fragile, a placid ocean beneath a Bible verse on an inspirational poster.

“This poetry has testicles. It’s rougher than rodeo. Which is why the cliffs are crowded with spectators.”

And (story!)

“Step outside your front door and look at today’s stage. Speak. God will reply. He will speak to you. He gave you senses. Use them. He will parade His art. He will give you a scene, a setting for the day. He will give you conflict to overcome, opportunities for your character to grow or fail.

“But do not expect Him to speak in English. And do not expect Him to stay on whatever topic you might choose. His attention is everywhere and no story should be easy, as every reader knows…

“Listen to your dialogue. Look at your thoughts. Be horrified. Be grateful that God loves characters, and loves characters on journeys, characters honestly striving to grow. If someone else was delivering your lines, would you like them? If someone else was wearing your attitude, would you be impressed?”

And

"Here is my lady, my picture, my philosophical account of an olive. I look around at the stuff of the world and I ask myself what it is made of.

“Words. Magic words. Words spoken by the Infinite, words so potent, spoken by One so potent that they have weight and mass and flavor. They are real. They have taken on flesh and dwelt among us. They are us. In the Christian story, the material world came into existence at the point of speech, and that speech was ex nihilo, from nothing. God did not look around for some cosmic goo to sculpt, or another god to dice and recycle. He sang a song, composed a poem, began a novel so enormous that even the Russians are dwarfed by its heaped up pages.

“You are spoken. I am spoken. We stand on a spoken stage. The spinning kind. The round kind. The moist kind. The kind of stage with beetles and laughter and babies and dirt and snow and fresh-cut cedar."

My book is a flurry of pencil-marks.

This quote by C.S. Lewis crossed my path as I was knee-deep in Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl:

"Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing....All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still 'about to be.'"

A stab of joy. That sums it up.

In previous posts I’ve linked articles by N.D. Wilson and shared quotes. The boys have read all of his fiction books: the 100 Cupboards series, the Ashtown Burials series, and Leepike Ridge. Wilson’s Boys of Blur just came out this month, so I picked it up. It’s next on the stack for the boys.

Let’s see. What else have the boys been enjoying recently? (They fly through books much faster than I.)

Levi is working his way through The Auralia Thread series by Jeffrey Overstreet. He also read through The Shakespeare Stealer trilogy.

After seeing this book list, I pre-read The City of Ember then handed it over to the boys. Luke immediately requested the movie (watched it) and the other books in the series (read them), and gave them most favorite status. Luke reads quite a bit, but I’ve never seen him enjoy a book quite like he did with these.

Also from the afore-mentioned list, I’ve added Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (and the prequel Starry River of the Sky) to the stack. Oh, and Inside Out and Back Again as well.

I can’t remember what list I saw it on, but The Wishing-Chair by Enid Blyton was recommended somewhere. We had other books by Blyton, but not that one. I picked up the six books in The Enid Blyton Faraway Tree & Wishing-Chair Collection. Levi and Luke sped through them, but Leif was a tough one to convince (he doesn’t like new things). His brothers tried to tell him how much they loved the books, but he didn’t budge. Finally I had to require a few chapters…and he was hooked, finishing them in no time.

I also had to twist Leif’s arm to get him to read Little Pear, but then he quickly followed it up with Little Pear and His Friends. They are great books for kids just starting on simple chapter books.

I need to spend more time reading to Lola. Or assign the boys as reading helpers. [grin] She has been enjoying I Spy: An Alphabet in Art and is very interested in letter sounds. It is crazy to think that Luke and Leif started reading about her age!

 

What books has your family been enjoying? Or hating? [ha!]

Silly Children

Lola loves scissors. She knew, from multiple past experiences, that she would get in trouble for cutting her hair—so she cut her eyebrows.

Silly child.

Luke was having a rough day too.

Because writing.

Torture.

Worst life ever.

Lola was sympathizing. And working on her frowny face.

Just in case you think lessons are all roses and games around here.

Writing = BADBADBADBADBADBAD (Luke asked me to type that.)

And just in case you think that is an isolated emotion—it’s not. It is a generally held opinion by the boys at Mt. Hope Chronicles that any assigned writing is torture and must be met with all possible resistance and tantrums and whiny fits.

Levi distracts himself from the pain by playing with his terrifying hair. Unfortunately, there are only so many hills I can choose to die on. Writing, yes. Hair, no.

Spring Protocol Event

Our local Classical Conversations community put on a spring protocol event for the Challenge I and II groups (20 students, roughly 9th-11th grades). They had a gorgeous, multi-course dinner at a family home and then had a dance (with a dance instructor) at a separate location. I was able to take pictures of the evening and wanted to share a few glimpses.

Respite

• res·pite [ réspit ]

1. brief interval of rest: a brief period of rest and recovery between periods of exertion or after something disagreeable

 

Facebook tells me it is National Siblings Day. I don’t really need an excuse to celebrate my sisters, but I figured this would be a good time to share the photo of my sisters and me (and Mom and Ilex and Rilla) on our girls’ day out that we spent together the day before my birthday.

And any day is a good day for Jane Austen.

“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply...” ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Speaking of much-needed respite, my dear friend Cheris offered to watch my kids for a few hours this afternoon after our Memory Master director proofs (congratulations to her daughter Chloe for passing her MM proof just before us!).

Russ has been in Washington D.C. the past few days, so I really appreciated the time alone. Like, really appreciated it.

(No, my choice of respite food was not healthy. But it was delicious.)

Speaking of respite (how many times can I write the word “respite” in this post?), Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World is 200 pages of delightful, delicious respite. I’ll share a few quotes in my upcoming “What We’re Reading” post.

Memory Masters!

 

As of today, we have THREE Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Memory Masters in the house!

Levi and Luke both completed their director proofs for the second year in a row, and I have now finished all 3 cycles. Whew!!

What is a CC Memory Master? A student recites for his or her tutor every piece of information memorized in a cycle (24 weeks work of information) for all subjects (History Timeline, U.S. Presidents, History, Geography, Science, Latin, English Grammar, and Math) with 100% mastery all in one sitting. (This happens after multiple practice “proofs.”) This recitation can take anywhere from 1-2+ hours. A one-hour recitation is speed-mode! After completing a tutor “proof,” a student is spot-checked in all subjects by the CC director (around 20 minutes). If a student is able to complete the director proof with 100% mastery, he or she becomes a Memory Master.

What did we memorize in Cycle 2?

• 161 events and people in a chronological timeline (from ancient history to the present)
• 24 world history sentences (from 800 AD to the present)
• 44 U.S. presidents in chronological order
• More than 100 locations and geographic features in Europe, Asia, Central America, and Southern Africa
• 24 science facts/lists (including biomes, planets, Newton’s laws of motion, and the laws of thermodynamics)
• Latin verb endings (six tenses) of the first conjugation
• English grammar facts (including pronoun lists and parts of speech definitions)
• Multiplication tables up to 15x15, common squares and cubes, unit conversions, basic geometry formulas, and math laws

Years ago—it seems like yesterday—I received our first Foundations Guide in the mail. I remember thinking, alternately, there is no way we can memorize all this information and I cannot wait until we’ve memorized all this information!! Here we are. Four years later. My boys have been introduced to all three cycles of memory work, and mastered much of it. I’ve mastered and tested each and every piece of memory work in the Foundations Guide. And I can personally attest—it’s possible.

Why memorize?

“No matter what your children’s strengths and weaknesses are, or their likes and dislikes, or their gifts and talents—their brains want to gather, sort, and store, and retrieve information.” (The Core, page 52)

“It is not surprising that, for the Greek mind, the Muses—of epic, history, astronomy, music, dance, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, and sacred poetry—should be daughters of Memory.” (Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, page 9)

“One simple and immutable fact about the human brain is that you can’t get something out of it that isn’t there to start with. Supernatural inspiration notwithstanding, human beings in general—and children in particular—really can’t produce... thoughts or concepts that they haven’t first experienced and stored. In other words, we cannot think a thought we don’t have to begin with. Even the most unique, creative, and extraordinary ideas can only exist as a combination and permutation of previously learned bits of information.” ~Andrew Pudewa, 1 Myth, 2 Truths

 

“There are times when memorization is out of favor in education. Some might say that “rote memorization” is not appropriate as a teaching strategy. “Rote memorization,” however, is loaded language, biased against the discipline and effort required to learn things permanently. There is nothing wrong with challenge. We must remember that the alternative to remembering is forgetting, and when we teach something as important as grammar, that will be needed for one’s entire life, the ban on memorization makes little sense. There are areas of knowledge that should be memorized, and in the past, there was a better term for it: to learn by heart.” ~Michael Clay Thompson

“But more than that, we would desire to bring children into the garden of created being, and thought, and expression. Caldecott reminds us that for the medieval schoolmen, as for Plato, education was essentially musical, an education in the cosmos or lovely order that surrounds us and bears us up. Thus when we teach our youngest children by means of rhymes and songs, we do so not merely because rhymes and songs are actually effective mnemonic devices. We do so because we wish to form their souls by memory: we wish to bring them up as rememberers, as persons, born, as Caldecott points out, in certain localities, among certain people, who bear a certain history, and who claim our love and loyalty.” (Anthony Esolen, author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, in the Foreword from Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott)

In addition to the benefits of stored information, the process of testing for Memory Master develops work ethic, the ability to work toward a goal, perseverance, and a willingness to do hard things.

But do we consider memorization the be-all and end-all?

No. This is just the beginning.

Next comes the questions…

Congratulations to all our fellow Memory Masters!

40 Days of Rhetoric

Oh, and The Lost Tools of Writing.

I have my work cut out for me.

If you want a summary, check out What is Rhetoric? by Jennifer Courtney at Classical Conversations.

If you want a little more, purchase one of these GORGEOUS, laminated rhetoric reference charts. They are incredibly well-designed, and stuffed full of practical information and instruction.

I may not share much of what I am reading and discovering until July or so, but just know that I’m putting my nose to the grindstone.

Yes, Classical Conversations Parent Practicum season is just around the corner…

Just Call Me a Curator

 

A Curator of Randomness.

That’s it!!

The above picture is one of my favorite family pictures. Levi was almost 4 and Luke was 1 and a half. This is the “no-hair” stage of our family.

Words, Questions, and Music

::  Blessings and Symbols by Andrew Kern @ CiRCE (Brilliant look into the nature of words. Be sure to read to the end.)

“I love the way another person can possess an amazing insight in his own soul and, by embodying it in a collection of sound-signs (what we call words), he can give me eyes to see the same thing: at least, if I am ready.”

“Using words we can bond and bless, or we can break apart and curse.”

::  ‘A Holy Curiosity’: We Can Vastly Improve Education By Teaching This One Skill @ Cognoscenti

“What have we been missing in all the debates about education reform? The question.”

I’ve been thinking much about asking questions. I am, by nature, a “formula” person rather than a “question” person. My husband and oldest son, on the other hand, question everything. Everything.

Dorothy Sayers addresses in The Mind of the Maker the “formula” or “problem/solution” obsession that society seems to have.

“The detective problem summons us to the energetic exercise of our wits precisely in order that, when we have read the last page, we may sit back in our chairs and cease thinking. So does the cross-word. So does the chess-problem…The struggle is over and finished with and now we may legitimately, if we like, cease upon the midnight with no pain. The problem leaves us feeling like that because it is deliberately designed to do so. Because we can, in this world, achieve so little, and so little perfectly, we are prepared to pay good money in order to acquire a vicarious sensation of achievement. The detective-novelist knows this, and so do the setters of puzzles. And the schoolboy, triumphantly scoring a line beneath his finished homework, is thankful that he need not…inquire into the subsequent history of A, B, and C. But this is the measure, not of the likeness between problems in detection and problems in life, but of the unlikeness. For the converse is also true; when they are done with, they are dead.”

Convicted.

And so I am slowly learning to ask questions and accept the tension of the unknown.

In the aptly named book The Question, Leigh Bortins spends more than 200 pages on the topic of asking questions (complete with model questions). Questions of definition, comparison, relationship, circumstance, and testimony (Aristotle’s five common topics)—across all academic subjects. If one needs inspiration or direction to feed the spirit of inquiry, this book is a great start. It is thoroughly grounded in practical application, but here is a taste of the inspirational:

“Contentment in questions and mysteries seems to irk the world.”

“I wonder if it was because she had been trained to write down the correct answer and for some discussions there are no correct answers, only very interesting questions.”

“How do you know what questions to ask if there are not copious amounts of ideas in your head?”

“Humans long for relationship, and thinking together in an interesting way about hard things is very rewarding.”

“They limit the questions, so they limit the answers.”

“Here is the problem with teaching a populace to ask questions: they ask questions.”

“Remember, the trouble about learning to ask questions is that you’ll ask questions. No more accepting the status quo. No more doing what you are told. Know thyself, and be prepared for a life of conflict. C.S. Lewis called man “a glorious ruin.” The more questions we ask, the more ruins we will find in need of repair. But the entire adventure is glorious.”

[Another fantastic question resource for literature is the Teaching the Classics Seminar Syllabus, which includes pages of Socratic discussion questions.]

 

The boys have been learning about composers and the instruments of the orchestra in Classical Conversations during the past few weeks, and someone shared links to the following videos. The filming is fantastic, and we loved watching them, so I thought I would share.

Stravinsky

 

Tchaikovsky

An Odd Combination

[It makes absolutely no sense to combine these pictures and the following links, but that’s life, folks.]

Did you know that Russ and I both used to have hair? It was almost to my waist when we were married. Russ jokingly said that he would divorce me if I cut it. I did. He didn’t.

I had it short by my sister’s wedding the following year (‘97), had it longer again by 2001, and cut it super short right after Levi was born at the beginning of 2002. My hairdresser almost wouldn’t do it. She was afraid I was hormonal, and that my husband would be angry with her. I assured her that I was not attached to my hair, and she finally agreed.

Other than one failed attempt to grow it out the year I was pregnant with Leif, I’ve had it super short for the past 12 years. I’m afraid I’m doomed to an eternity of pixie hair because I now cannot stand the feeling of hair on my face. Sigh. At least it’s easy other than frequent hair cuts.

Russ and I have been married for 18 years now, despite the short hair. So it’s all good.

Stay tuned for more pictures taken some time between 1974 and 2001…

And on a completely unrelated note, I’ll share some food for thought that has been swirling around in my world the past few days. Because my life is not compartmentalized.

On Faith and Social Issues

 

 

::  Where Children Sleep (pictures of children and the places they sleep)

 

On the Noah Brouhaha

::  All the Noah That’s Fit to Print by Jeffrey Overstreet @ Patheos (I really like this guy.)

::  “The World That Then Was…” by Dr. Brian Mattson (his thoughts prior to watching the movie Noah, very intelligent and thoughtful)

::  Sympathy for the Devil by Dr. Brian Mattson (his thoughts after watching the movie, a tad arrogant in presentation, but fascinating)

A couple responses to Dr. Mattson’s article:

::  No, Noah Is Not Gnostic @ Patheos

::  IS DARREN ARONOFSKY’S NOAH GNOSTIC? @ I’ve Seen That Movie Too

And Dr. Mattson’s video response to the responses (yes, this could go on forever…)

::  I Respond to a Few Critics

While I was browsing Dr. Mattson’s blog (he was unknown to me prior to this discussion), I came across his post on the Ham v. Nye debate. A little late to the party, but intelligent, worthy reading:

On Creation:

::  A Tramp Called Lady Luck by Dr. Brian Mattson

“Okay. So, I’ll cut to the chase: the question that ought to be debated is whether the cosmos is created or not created. There is a designer or there is not. There is metaphysics or just physics. There is an “on purpose” or there is an “accident.” That’s the divide, folks. That means the following topics are, well, off topic: the length of creation days, the age of the universe, the age of the earth, the historicity of Noah’s flood, when dinosaurs lived, and radiometric dating practices. Every minute of the debate talking about those things is, frankly, the waste of a good minute. I’m not saying they aren’t interesting questions in and of themselves that are worth thinking about. They surely are. But they are not the questions at issue when we are dealing with the question of whether the universe is a creation or something else.”

Pulling all of the above topics into a single, grace-filled interview:

::  Ravi Zacharias: With Gentleness and Respect @ Outreach Magazine

“So I often say of great social issues—not that they are unimportant—this is not the setting in which I want to talk about it. If you want to discuss it, let’s sit around a table so that at the end of it, even if we disagree with one another, we can shake hands or give each other a hug and say truth will triumph in the end. But if I gave you an answer in this public setting, you’re not going to be able to counter it, you’re not going to be able to tell me what’s on your heart, and we’ll walk away creating a bigger wall between ourselves.”

And

“If a person tells me science is all that matters. I generally say to them, “Should the scientist be honest in giving us his or her findings?’ And they just stare at me. I say, “Is that a scientific question or a metaphysical question, that the scientist should be honest in giving me his or her findings? That’s not a scientific theory, that’s a moral theory. That’s a moral pronouncement we’re making.”

“You cannot have a scientific single vision in this world. There has to be a convergence of the great disciplines—of cosmology, of theology, of history, of epistemology. All of these disciplines have to come to bear to explain the undeniable reality in which we live.”

 

What have you been doing, reading, watching, or thinking about this week?

40 Days of Memory Lane

Yes, on this auspicious day, my fortieth birthday, I shall commence the forty-day parade down memory lane, beginning, fittingly, with a photo of my round self with my lovely grandmother (and my big sister, who hit 40 waaaaay before I did).

My parents, with Holly and me, traveled to Aruba to visit my grandparents. My grandparents spent many years on the island (twenty?) as missionaries. My grandfather ran a radio station there.

I was a very fat baby.

But my parents were glamorous.

And one more for this evening, before I run out to enjoy book club with my best lovelies. (It has been a busy weekend and Monday. I hope to have more time to post this week!)

P.S. I am the one in the red jumpsuit. Admit it: you’re intimidated by my fabulous style.

Witness

 

“We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet; what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything—the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’” Shall We Dance?

Have you met Rueben, Swede, Davy, and Jeremiah Land? John Ames of Gilead? Jayber Crow? I would love to introduce you.

Rueben, John, and Jayber are witnesses.

In Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River (every sentence, from first to last, a masterpiece), eleven-year-old Rueben says this:

My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed—though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.

I believe I was preserved, through those twelve airless minutes, in order to be a witness, and as a witness, let me say that a miracle is no cute thing but more like the swing of a sword.

Make of it what you will. Yes.

Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is a novel that struck me to the core. In a way similar to Peace Like a River, it is a profound look into the essence of life. What it means to live. What it means to be present. To be a witness to one’s own life as well as the lives of others. To be a being in time and yet part of eternity. To be filled with awe by the miracle of life. To have faith in times of grief. To see beauty in the ordinary. To wrestle with questions. To have grace for the human-ness of others.

But rather than seeing it all through the eyes of youth, John Ames of Gilead, Iowa, is reflecting over seventy-six years of hard life. This is a man humble, gracious, and profound. He sees eternity in a human story.

“I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all be changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.”

While both novels are works of fiction, they contain truth that is often inaccessible in works of non-fiction. Analogical truth. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:

“Fable is more historical than fact because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.”

My friend Jessye and I read A Handmaiden’s Tale about the same time we read Gilead, and she remarked on the surprising coincidence (due to the extreme differences in theme and purpose) that both books have a Gilead. She discovered that Gilead means “hill of testimony or witness.” Knowing the definition brings a new depth to both books (words matter!).

In telling our own stories we must, whether intentionally or inadvertently, tell the stories of those whose lives are inextricably entwined in ours. We are witnesses to the lives, the stories surrounding us. [This blog is my Gilead, my hill of testimony. These pictures, my witness.]

And then I met Jayber Crow. He was my introduction to Wendell Berry.

I won’t pretend that I was sucked in from the beginning. Though well-written and full of interesting anecdotes of life and people, I spent the first two-thirds of the book wondering where it was going. I remember Andrew Kern talking about his "non-linear brain" and that he liked to think that he was seeing things from the perspective of eternity, which is exactly how I felt about Jayber Crow by the end (and Gilead in retrospect). It was outside of time, looking down at all the completed threads at once.

While I am decidedly a linear-thinker who connects best with a beginning, a straight, chronological line through the middle, and package wrapped with a bow at the end, I am learning to embrace the non-linear tapestry of eternity as well as questions without answers or formulas.

Jayber writes his story as he is looking back on his life, as non-linear as John Ames. In the early chapters of the book, Jayber has a little exchange with a teacher soon after he feels called (or obligated) to the ministry.

I said, “Well,” for now I was ashamed, “I had this feeling maybe I had been called.”

“And you may have been right. But not to what you thought. Not to what you think. You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”

“And how long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.”

“That could be a long time.”

“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”

And then we are invited to live out the questions with Jayber as he observes life as a small-town barber. A little at a time. In stories of community and nature. Of soul-wrenching grief and loss and beauty and laughter. Of integrity, or the lack thereof. Of exquisite human-ness.

Berry allows his characters to be what they are, without manipulating them to be what they ought. Not white-washed. Not vilified.

I have no desire to spoil the unfolding of the conclusion, but I wish to share a few favorite quotes.

p 126

“They were rememberers, carrying in their living thoughts all the history that such places as Port William ever have…”

p 127

“I came to feel a tenderness for them all. This was something new to me. It gave me a curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather-toughened old faces. They had known hard use, nearly all of them. You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved. Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis. They had use their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather. The backs of their hands showed a networks of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thornstruck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned. Their faces told that they had suffered things they did not talk about.”

p 329

“It is not a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that the world is always passing and irrecoverable, to be known only in loss. To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain. It is a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that you are a human and therefore joined by kind to all that hates the world and hurries its passing—the violence and greed and falsehood that overcome the world that is meant to be overcome by love.”

p 353

“I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go.”

p 49

“Everything bad was laid on the body, and everything good was credited to the soul. It scared me a little when I realized that I saw it the other way around. If the soul and body really were divided, then it seemed to me that all the worst sins—hatred and anger and self-righteousness and even greed and lust—came from the soul. But these preachers I’m talking about all thought that the soul could do no wrong, but always had its face washed and its pants on and was in agony over having to associate with the flesh and the world.”

p 51

“But now I was unsure what it would be proper to pray for, or how to pray for it. After you have said “thy will be done,” what more can be said? And where do you find the strength to pray “thy will be done” after you see what it means?”

p 71

“The university thought of itself as a place of freedom for thought and study and experimentation, and maybe it was, in a way. But it was an island too, a floating or a flying island. It was preparing people from the world of the past for the world of the future, and what it was missing was the world of the present, where every body was living its small, short, surprising, miserable, wonderful, blessed, damaged, only life.”

p 204

“Time, which is supposed to heal, only made them old.”

p 205

"History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings."

p 210

“Theoretically, there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have. But then this person must meet herself coming back: Theoretically, there always is a better inhabitant of this place, a better member of the community, a better worker, spouse, and friend than she is. This surely describes one of the circles of Hell, and who hasn’t traveled around it a time or two?”

p 249

"Hate succeeds. This world gives plentiful scope and means to hatred, which always finds its justifications and fulfills itself perfectly in time by destruction of the things of time. That is why war is complete and spares nothing, balks at... nothing, justifies itself by all that is sacred, and seeks victory by everything that is profane. Hell itself, the war that is always among us, is the creature of time, unending time, unrelieved by any light or hope.

"But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.

"Maybe love fails here, I thought, because it cannot be fulfilled here...

“She was a living soul and could be loved forever. Like every living creature, she carried in her the presence of eternity."

p 322

“The world doesn’t stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?”

p 356

“I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say, “Good-good-good-good-good!” like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit. I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs. I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith.”

SPRING!

 

I have good, good news. Spring is here. Not only is spring here, but we’ve had SUNSHINE in our neck of the woods. It does wonders for the mind and spirit. We have another day of lovely weather before it turns liquid gray around here.

 

We’ve spent time outside this week, working on yard clean-up and such. It has felt good to breathe fresh air and feel the rays of the sun—even if it hasn’t been super warm (50s and 60s, but tomorrow should reach 70 degrees).

The boys got new bikes, and they’ve seen a lot of action in just a few days—even when it’s hard to put down a good book.

 

The boys and Russ are also in the middle of a two week break from swim practices. Hallelujah. Russ desperately needed some breathing room in his schedule—even if the break has been full of other odd jobs.

 

We attended a wedding yesterday (Saturday) and a big joint sister-birthday party this afternoon. No pictures. Tragic. I also intended to complete this post days ago, and I’m just getting around to finishing it…

 

I turn 40 in one week. I had grand visions of a drumroll of some sort, but it may turn out to be anticlimactic after all is said and done.

About that energy thing… You may be very proud of me. I’ve been outside some, but I’ve also worked out with the Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred DVD FIVE TIMES since my “energy begets energy” post last week. Considering I could hardly move after the first two workouts, I’m very proud of myself. I tell myself that it is only 20 minutes. I have absolutely no excuse, and it is a great workout in 20 minutes. It felt rather terrific last night (for a lazy person who hates to exercise, anyway), and I’m not sore today. Progress.

Have you read those little poster things that mentions a bunch of things women should be able to accomplish (home-cooked meals, a clean house, homeschooling kids, quality time with husband, whatever) and then the punch-line: pick two. Well, my poster would read: pick one. This week—working out, yes; eating well, no; up early, no. Sigh.

Maybe I can manage TWO things this coming week. That would be fantastic.

In reviewing the past month or so of posts, I wondered whether my readers feel like they get whiplash bouncing from subject to subject. (Do you?) I sure am all over the place, aren’t I? Like a box of chocolates…

Are you on spring break this week? We don’t have Classical Conversations tomorrow, but the boys still have choir and we’ve had enough breaks in the past two months to last until June. Besides, it’s time for some serious Memory Master business! I’ve got all my memory work down, but the boys have a little way to go before mastery.

And some food for thought while I’m busy being productive this week:

On Reading

::  Hope from an Unlikely Place @ Story Warren

Perhaps the days we feel least like reading stories of knights and dragons, of giant wooden horses and sea serpents, and of mythical gilded boxes filled with the problems of the world - are the very days that we need to catch a glimpse of the shadow of Hope. In the beginning, Hope spoke while hovering over darkness. In the end, it will sound like rushing waters and blaring trumpets. But while we’re waiting, Hope’s whisper can be heard in the most unexpected of places - like the funerals of saints and the flutter of fairy wings.

::  Threads @ Story Warren

When our children emerge from home and set out on their own adventures, they will encounter many foreign lands, each with its own set of myths, customs, and adventures. Yet they will not be venturing on their own. Deeply embedded in their souls, they will carry the adventures of Pooh on a blustery day, Sir Lancelot as he fights for all that is good, and Bilbo Baggins, although conflicted, as he sets off for his Tookish adventures…

On Fear, Sorrow, and Joy

::  Love Begets @ The Rabbit Room (This post was about the death of a pet, to which I cannot relate, but this passage jumped out at me)

So here is what I want to remember and never forget: Anxiety is the devil. Fear is a taste of hell because it cuts us off from the ever-offered rest of God’s love. And fear cannot do one damn thing to avert the thing feared. Sorrow, on the other hand, is a kind friend, and when it comes, grace comes, too, and all the tender mercies of God. All fear is the fear of loss and death; all love comes with a price tag of pain; all true sorrow has its counterpoint of joy. And it’s real. We’re living it in the most vivid way. And if we’re running along the beach laughing at one moment and weeping over the grief that is coming the next, well then, this is life abundant, the full package. And the joy is more real than the grief because the joy is forever and the pain is for but the passing shadow of this life.

On Music and Repetition

::  One more time: Why we love repetition in music @ Aeon Magazine

In fact, part of what it means to listen to something musically is to participate imaginatively.

Repetition serves as a handprint of human intent. A phrase that might have sounded arbitrary the first time might come to sound purposefully shaped and communicative the second.

Repeated exposure makes one sound seem to connect almost inevitably to the next, so that when we hear ‘What is love?’, ‘Baby, don’t hurt me’ immediately plays through our minds. Few spoken utterances contain this irresistible connection between one part and the next. And when we do want bits of speech to be tightly bound in this way - if we’re memorising a list of the presidents of the United States, for example - we might set it to music, and we might repeat it. Listening seems musical when the current bit of sound feels like it’s inextricably pulled to the next bit of sound. Repetition intensifies this effect.

Classical Conversations ~ Let’s Talk about Challenge A

We are wrapping up our fourth year with Classical Conversations. Can it possibly have been that long since we took the plunge?

I wrote a detailed post about Classical Conversations a short while into our third year, and not much has changed. All three boys are in the morning Foundations classes for the fourth year while Lola hangs out in the nursery. This is Levi’s second year in the afternoon Essentials class and Luke’s first. Leif attends an afternoon play camp and then an early elementary choir class. (Levi and Luke attend beginning choir after Essentials.) Levi, Luke, and I are all working toward becoming Memory Masters again this year (Cycle 2).

But next year opens a whole new chapter. Challenge.

Levi will be enrolled in the full-day Challenge A class for 7th grade, with a full plate of assignments for his week at home.

The Classical Conversations Challenge levels include 6 “seminars”: Grammar, Exposition and Composition, Debate, Research, Rhetoric, and Logic. Students complete work at home and come prepared to present and discuss during class one day each week for 30 weeks.

This is going to be a tremendous transition for Levi. Half of me is excited for the new opportunity and half is filled with trepidation. It is fairly easy for me to pinpoint what will come easily and what will be a struggle. Time will tell if I’m correct.

I’ve spent some time thinking over the ways in which he is prepared, and where we might be able to close the gap during the next few months.

:: Grammar—“Latin A” using Henle First Year Latin

We’ve been progressing slowly with Latin for the past 4 years using Prima Latina, Song School Latin, Latina Christiana, and First Form Latin. I think Levi will be well-prepared for a strong start in Henle Latin if we can finish up First Form Latin in the next few months.

The strong grammar foundation he has received in Essentials will be helpful as well.

:: Exposition and Composition—Literature, Discussion, & Persuasive Writing

Challenge now uses The Lost Tools of Writing, and I’m excited that Levi has the opportunity to use this program. I have the teacher’s manual and the DVDs. Now I just need to find some time to read and watch. I did attend a Lost Tools of Writing workshop a year ago, so I’m hoping that gives me a little head start. Levi has been writing with IEW’s history-themed writing books for the past two years in Essentials, but prescribed writing is definitely a struggle (he enjoys free-writing on his own topics). He has two big writing assignments coming up at the end of this school year—a research paper and a persuasive essay. I’m praying for a strong finish.

I think Levi has previously read all of the literature selections, and both of us will re-read them over the summer. It should take him a day or so, and me all summer long. [sigh]

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham
• The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
• Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli
• A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32 by Joan W. Blos
• Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
• The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare

 

:: Debate—Geography

Levi has had a lot of geography exposure through CC Foundations, but drawing the entire world from memory is going to be a huge challenge! I hope to have him regularly draw maps through the summer, and he’ll be spending quite a bit of time on the geography quizzes at Sheppard Software. I’ve purchased the recommended Compact Atlas of the World to get him started.

::  Research—Natural Science

The first semester involves researching an assigned topic each week. The students record their research, illustrate or make a model of their findings, and present the results in class during the seminar. If I understand correctly, the students are able to use the IEW model for writing these papers. Levi and I might try a practice run or two with our own science topics over the summer.

The second semester involves drawing, labeling, and memorizing nine body systems. I have the biology worksheets used in class, so we will probably just browse the book so that we can familiarize ourselves with the general idea. The Foundations classes will be memorizing human body systems during the first half of the year (and Levi went through that cycle a couple years ago).

::  Rhetoric—Clear Reasoning

The first semester (I believe) uses the book It Couldn't Just Happen: Knowing the Truth About God's Awesome Creation, which I’ve purchased and will pre-read. Students are assigned weekly reading, outlining, and summarizing, and also memorize a series of catechism-style questions.

During the second semester, students work through The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning. Levi attended a 3-day logic camp (using the same book) last summer, has read the book, and has watched the DVD. He enjoyed it all, and I think he’ll be glad to go through it in-depth.

[Edited to add] This is a fantastically fun illustrated book of fallacies, online for free, that complements The Fallacy Detective. I’ll have Levi read through it a few times.

::  Logic—Mathematics

Levi has been using Teaching Textbooks, but the recommended text for Challenge A is Saxon Math 8/7. Since Levi has just finished Teaching Textbooks 6 and it is not necessarily a rigorous program, I’ve purchased Saxon 7/6 with the Teaching Tapes (recommended by Leigh Bortins). Levi will work through 7/6 over the next five months. He won’t finish it (I don’t expect that he will complete a lesson daily over the summer), but I’m hoping it makes the transition to Saxon 8/7 a little easier.

 

This Challenge program will be a new experience for us, so I’ll keep you posted as we go through our year!

(Nothing will change for Luke and Leif, though Lola may spend our community day off-campus with my mom or sister. She doesn’t turn four until the first of October, and I’d like to wait another year before enrolling her in Foundations.)

Have you had a child go through Challenge A? Would you like to share your experience or tips that might be helpful?

[Edited to add] The recent post, What’s it like to be a Challenge parent?, at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood is a great resource and encouragement. Check it out!

Energy Begets Energy

 

“And what is a man without energy?   Nothing - nothing at all.” ~Mark Twain  

But what do you do if you don’t have any to start with?

Overwhelming surroundings or circumstances throw me into energy conservation mode. And it doesn’t take much to overwhelm me.

Fight or flight? Nah, I just play dead.

When I hit energy conservation mode, a grinding halt, it is only by God’s grace that I can bust out of it. How does one change by sheer force of will, when one has no will to force?

Seriously, while most of you are itching to get outside and stretch your limbs and breathe fresh air, maybe dig in the dirt a little, I just want to huddle into myself. A small cocoon.

Driving the boys to swim practice the other day, I noticed people out and about. They were running, biking, walking and talking, throwing javelins, gardening, busy being alive. It made me weary just watching them. Can you imagine?

Exercise is the last thing on my priority list when the day’s to-do list is stacking up like Mt. Vesuvius about to blow, and I can’t summon the energy to tackle it. Why stop at today’s to-do list? What I wouldn’t give for tunnel vision when I allow the week’s, the year’s to-do list to beat me down.

By God’s grace.

Today He gave me periodic blue skies and sunshine. And the will to go outside with the kids and walk/run/bike for a little bit.

A mustard seed of energy. That begat energy.

 

It’s not like the world was coming to an end this past week.

Just post vacation disaster and laundry explosion. Ants. [shudder] Subsequent deep cleaning of several areas I had no desire to deep clean (and the in-progress disaster). Deep cleaning of bathroom cupboards while in procrastination/avoidance mode. Daylight Savings (there went my early mornings). A disastrous house (again, still, always). Carb binging. Clean eating detox. Classical Conversations (for which I was totally not prepared). PMS. Enneagram rabbit trail (more about this in a minute) and subsequent emotional breakdown (see “PMS”). Schedules thrown off by unplanned visitors and broken appointments. Lessons. [cough] (We’ll be schooling through August…)

 

I knew exactly what I needed to do, even if I didn’t want to do it. Eat well. And I have—for the past six days. Well, except for the plain semi-sweet chocolate for a couple days because, ahem (see “PMS”).

Turning that around was a minor miracle in itself. But I must. MUST.

My go-to versatile, convenient, tasty, healthy, paleo food has been the sweet kale salad kit from Costco. It's a crunchy green salad mix with broccoli slaw, thinly-sliced Brussels sprouts, shredded cabbage, kale, and chicory. It comes with cranberries, pumpkin seeds, and poppy seed dressing, but I've found many ways to use it without. The greens mix adds great crunch to any other salad (I specifically LOVE it in taco salad, with or without other greens). It is great stir-fried as a hot side dish with sliced almonds or as a main dish with chicken sausage or bacon. Or stir-fried and covered with spaghetti sauce (instead of noodles). But my most favorite way to eat it is with a creamy slaw dressing and pulled pork. Delish.

And then I cleaned up a few rooms. No, not clean, but passable enough not to trigger emotional and mental breakdown upon entry.

Yesterday I busted out the basic to-do list. Dishes, laundry, lesson prep. And got to bed at a reasonable hour.

Today I managed to kick myself out of bed early. Spent some quiet devotion/study time. Buckled down to lessons with the boys. No screens for the kids. Breathed fresh air. Stretched my legs and lungs.

Life begets life. Energy begets energy.

Now, about that Enneagram rabbit trail. I was going to skip it, because it’s bedtime, but it ties into and leads to another thing that I want to end with.

Y’all know I have a thing for personality tests. I have a serious passion for Myers-Briggs types. Well, the rabbit trail started with a blog series by Leigh Kramer. So I took this free Enneagram test.

According to my friend Tsh, Myers-Briggs supposedly deals with your consciousness; Enneagram deals with your unconscious. MB is about our "True Self;" Enneagram is about the defenses we use to protect our "True Self." It reveals our weaknesses; our tendencies when we're stressed.

And this is what my results told me:

Type 6: The Security-Oriented Type

I must be secure and safe to survive. (Very strong score on this one.)
I must be helpful and caring to survive.
I must be knowledgeable to survive.
I must be perfect and good to survive.
I must maintain peace/calm to survive.
I must be impressive and attractive to survive.

And then it told me that my score was “very unhealthy”, that I needed to “work on my physical health and fitness” and my “psychological health.”

Like a knife, people.

Maybe I took the test on the wrong day of the month.

So then I took another test because I couldn’t let it go, and I wanted different results—which I received.

Type 4: The Individualist

They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity.

• Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance
• Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an
     identity)

That was the last personality test I took.

[Maybe this is a good time to change the subject and tell you about a test that went much better for me. I conquered the world history timed test. I can now type the name of every world country in under 9 minutes. Because I must be knowledgeable, perfect, and impressive to survive.]

I was going somewhere with this…

Oh, yes. I went to a swim team awards potluck this evening and made good food choices because I’m on a roll and energy begets energy. While I was sitting at the table eating my fruit, veggies, and meatloaf, the guest speaker got up to talk about…health and fitness. Yep. “Eat whole foods. Do strength training and cardio for a half hour (not more). You need to push your body. You need to breathe hard so your lungs get stronger. You need to stress your muscles so they get stronger.”

Okay, okay. Message received. I drove home, dusted of the 30 Day Shred, and did cardio and strength training for 20 minutes.

That’s something. A very little something, but maybe it will beget another something. But first, sleep.

“Energy and persistence alter all things.”  ~Benjamin Franklin

Andrew Kern on Rest and Assessment

For those of you eagerly waiting for me to organize and share my notes from the Andrew Kern seminars I attended, I have exciting news. CiRCE is releasing the video of the Medford seminar, so you are able to hear exactly what I heard. This is the first video in a six part series.

CiRCE also has an audio version of his talk, Assessment That Blesses. The audio version is a focused talk, which is wonderful if you are specifically needing to hear more complete (and linear) thoughts on the subject. The conference in Medford was more interactive, therefore more rabbit trails were taken. [grin]

I’d love for a few of you to watch the video and then join me for a conversation in the comments!

Have you listened to Andrew Kern before? Sometimes his ideas take a while to sink in. I was slightly overwhelmed the first time I listened to him. I think it was this interview (without the benefit of the visual presentation):

)

In Loving Memory