We humans are destined to live in troubled times. As novelist and screenwriter William Goldman puts it in The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Goldman echoes the words of Jesus, who made this clear to His followers, “In this world, you will have tribulation.” Trouble is the norm, not the exception, and troubled hearts always tend toward paralysis and polarization. In troubled states, one wants desperately either to despair and quit, or to do something. But what?

Take a moment to imagine a time when someone was truly interested in you. What would it be like for you to give this same kind of attention to your spouse, to your children, and to others? This Christmas, consider giving the greatest gift of all: your sacred presence.

The Pilgrims defined daily living in relationship with God; He was ever before them, the primary thing for them; their unfailing constancy in need and in provision, lives sustained in Him and through Him. May we gain daily perspective through the uncertainty of our times lived in and through Him and pause for Thanksgiving.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we find three major players, each with a different orientation toward life: The younger brother who seeks to ESCAPE and INDULGE The older brother who seeks to PERFORM and CONTROL The father who seeks TO KNOW and TO LOVE A true education must promote knowing and loving, not performing or indulging.

To believe in Divine Providence is to accept that we do not always know what is best, and the world does not conform to our will but to God's.

Slogans like "Be your way" and "Just do it," slogans that encourage us to follow any and all desires, may be good for sales, but they're horrible for souls.

As the spider is made for building silk webs, so we are made for building relations with persons and things. Our brains are designed for and dependent upon the creation of meaningful relations with persons and things.

Humans are not mere matter or a body directed by some external soul. They are a body-soul unity. In this dense discussion of these primary approaches to understanding humanity, we propose that a proper understanding of human nature will necessarily inform right relationship and education.

The first article of a valid educational creed – “children are born persons” – is of a revolutionary character; for what is a revolution but a complete reversal of attitude? - Charlotte Mason

It is a hard truth that, as a rule, a child will not give greater care and attention to the divine life than do his parents and teachers. read more

Education is the science of relations, relations with saints and sinners, the past and the present, earth and sky, art and craft, work and leisure. Still, there is more. read more.

Last time, we spoke of the Beauty Sense, a formative force rarely considered in its potent ability to shape the character of children. The Beautiful, together with the Good and the True are servants to one another, each drawing to the others, as it draws us to itself. Charlotte Mason speaks of imagination with the trained eye and ear, as central to the perception of beauty. read more

These are harrowing times. A man dies under the knee of a police officer. Such things ought not to be. Crowds erupt in riot, looting, burning and killing. Such things ought not to be. How are we to understand it? What is to be done? read more

The story of the principal and Suzie was primarily about recovery from a distressed brain state, but this is only half of the work that is to be accomplished. It is also the responsibility of parents and teachers to build resilience. Resilience is the capacity to absorb adversity without slipping into a dysfunctional, distressed brain state. The greater the resilience, the less likely a child (or anyone for that matter) is to respond adversely, regardless of what is happening in the environs. Eight practices for building resilience will be the topic of this blog. read more

These last weeks have been taxing. Routines have been radically altered. Freedoms have been constrained. Normal pleasures have been curtailed. For many, income has been disrupted. And perhaps most trying of all, the future is uncertain. The illusion that we are in control is being challenged. Such testing times can be stressful for parent and child alike.

That children should be trained to endure hardness, was a principle of the old regime. "I shall never make a sailor if I can't face the wind and rain," said a little fellow of five who was taken out on a bitter night to see a torchlight procession; and, though, shaking with cold, he declined the shelter of a shed. Nowadays, the shed is everything; the children must not be permitted to suffer from fatigue or exposure. That children should do as they are bid, mind their books, and take pleasure as it offers when nothing stands in the way, sums up the old theory; now, the pleasures of children are apt to be made more account than their duties. Formerly, they were brought up in subjection; now, the elders give place, and the world is made for the children.[1] READ MORE [1] Mason, Charlotte. Home Education. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989. 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q-NmpLDZbY&list=PLSyapsJ5Zs5NFrwJLZbT7i-SwQdA6yYpU&index=3 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rirUIuadIBo&list=PLSyapsJ5Zs5NFrwJLZbT7i-SwQdA6yYpU&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q-NmpLDZbY&list=PLSyapsJ5Zs5NFrwJLZbT7i-SwQdA6yYpU&index=3 

Last time, we heard from Essex Cholmondeley about opportunities, the opportunities parents have at home “to bring children up to be or to do” to be the kind of persons who have the power to live the life God has given them in exactly the way God intends, complete in mind, heart and soul with “the needs of something to love, something to do and something to think about.” It’s a lofty work indeed, to bring children up in these varied relationships. In truth,  each parent and each teacher are a part of this work already, consciously or unconsciously. more