"Strangers and Sojourners"

This was today's epistle. I should have realized that the title of O'Brien's novel was a Biblical reference. But I didn't. Anyway because I thought it was worth pondering:

Ephesians 2,19-22.

So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Yes, I can see how the novel is really about that process of being built into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. But the title I think also refers to the way the characters, especially Anne, feel during that process when they aren't always aware of the work of the builder and don't recognize themselves as members of the household.

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Her Father's Daughter

Dom is something of a worrier and I'm under strict orders never to leave the house without my cell phone. Bella knows now it's part of my routine whenever we go anywhere. She's all ready to go, standing by the door and I scurry off to find my shoes, my phone, and a half dozen other things.

Well this morning on the way to the grocery store I had Sophia in the car seat and Bella all ready and checked the diaper bag and didn't see the phone. thought's I'd left it by the couch when talking on it last night. Nope that was the night before. It actually was in the diaper bag and I found it on the second search. But the battery was dead and so I plugged it in to recharge and picked up the keys and Sophie and was ready to head out without the useless phone.

But Bella was having none of it. She started sobbing-- big tears and running nose, the works. "Cell phone, cell phone!" she cried. You'd have thought we were leaving a precious toy behind.

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Bella and Pooh

I've started reading the Winnie the Pooh stories to Bella and she seems to be enjoying them despite the length and lack of big shiny pictures.

It started because she has a little board book of Eeyore's Birthday that she's latched on to recently. It drives me crazy because it is so poorly abridged that the story no longer makes any sense, as if that isn't important since it's a book for the toddler set. For example, it says Eeyore is gloomy because it's his birthday but skips over his bemoaning the lack of presents so one is mystified by why a birthday would make Eeyore sad.

Anyway, I pulled out my The World of Pooh volume to look up the real story and to see if reading it to Bella might be a possibility. I was dismayed by how long the story was and gave up on the idea. But I left the book laying on the couch. A dangerous thing with Bella around. She found it and recognized Pooh and started to flip through it. Soon she was asking me if I could read it to her. I picked it up and started to read, thinking she would grow bored and wander off long before we came to the end of one story. Which she did. But then we came back to it another day and she sat through a whole chapter. And so we've returned again and again. Sometimes we finish a chapter, sometimes we don't; but Bella doesn't let that stop her from asking for Pooh again another time.

I've found that it is a perfect book for us at nap time or bedtime precisely because it is so long. When I read shorter picture books she frequently wants me to read the same book over and over again and I soon grow bored and surly. Pooh is much more restful to read, with more complex sentences and little jokes that are only funny to adults, and we don't run the danger of needing the constant repetition--- at least not yet.

I think too many people censor what they read to children, keeping only to materials they think the child can understand. But I've often found with Bella that she has patience for books that I would have thought much too old for her. I have no idea how much of the story she understands, probably more than I'd guess. But really at this age comprehension isn't the point (though I don't think that lets us off the hook and makes it excusable to give them stories which are incoherent.) She enjoys the rhyme and rhythm of the language, she enjoys the attention from me and the cuddling up close while I read and the drifting off to sleep to the sound of my voice. The story is secondary. She will gradually grow in understanding and one day will surprise me by how much she suddenly grasps.

And that isn't true just for small children. All of us, even adults, have this experience of being enchanted by the sound of something even when we don't quite catch the meaning. Just go to a poetry reading sometime. T. S. Eliot wrote somewhere (I can't recall exactly where I read it; but I'm almost positive it was Eliot.) something to the effect that in poetry the music of the language is primary and the meaning is secondary. In fact, I still find that to be the case with some of my favorite of Eliot's poems, The Four Quartets. There are long passages that I love the sound of, the feel of the language in my mouth, the play of the images, but I'm still not sure what it means. When it comes to poetry, understanding the meaning is overrated. And also, to some extent, this is true of novels as well.

And so I am committed to reading to Isabella books that are far above her "level", whatever that is. I do think limited-vocabulary books have their place in encouraging young children who are learning to read and who may become discouraged when faced with page after page of unfamiliar words and complicated sentences. But even at that stage, children can and should enjoy being read to from books that are beyond their ability to read on their own.

As usual the bear called Pooh leads me very quickly into deeper waters. He may be a bear of Very Little Brain; but he certainly challenges my mind.

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Eating Healthy

Needing some inspiration to get you into the kitchen this summer? I know I do. Dom sent me a link to this article that makes me want to run to the grocery store and start cooking: The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating

I'm not doing too bad. I frequently eat about seven of the foods on this list, though it's been a long while since I made chard.

I always have a bag of frozen wild blueberries on hand. My favorite breakfast is oatmeal (cooked with milk instead of water to add extra protein and calcium) with blueberries and sometimes a sprinkling of almonds.

We haven't had beets since last summer, but my favorite way to prepare them is in a dip with goat cheese and chives.

We actually eat turmeric quite often because turmeric is a primary spice in Indian cuisine and we eat lots of Indian food. And my Indian cookbooks give me three different yummy ways to prepare cabbage. The nice thing about cabbage is that it doesn't need to be used right away. I can buy a head and let it sit for about a week while I use up the more fragile greens first. Or I can cook half a head and then use the other half a few days later in a different recipe.


I also found this: The Best Way to Cook Vegetables

“There is a misperception that raw foods are always going to be better,” says Steven K. Clinton, a nutrition researcher and professor of internal medicine in the medical oncology division at Ohio State University. “For fruits and vegetables, a lot of times a little bit of cooking and a little bit of processing actually can be helpful.”

When I was teaching at Salem State I had one student who told me that she and her boyfriend were raw foodists. They try to eat no cooked food. According to those who practice raw foodism, it's supposed to be a healthier way to live. But those raw foodists are not always maximizing the nutrients they get from their food.

Because nutrient content and taste can vary so widely depending on the cooking method and how a vegetable is prepared, the main lesson is to eat a variety of vegetables prepared in a variety of ways.

And did you know this? You're much better off with a full-fat salad dressing and slices of avocado than with a fat free version. And it tastes better too.

What accompanies the vegetables can also be important. Studies at Ohio State measured blood levels of subjects who ate servings of salsa and salads. When the salsa or salad was served with fat-rich avocados or full-fat salad dressing, the diners absorbed as much as 4 times more lycopene, 7 times more lutein and 18 times the beta carotene than those who had their vegetables plain or with low-fat dressing.

I think many people get so paranoid about their fat intake that they forget that we do need fats to be healthy, especially mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. I had a roommate who loved avocados but avoided them "because they are so fatty". Really, she'd have been better off adding them to a big leafy salad. Approximately 63% of the fat in avocados is monounsaturated, 20% is polyunsaturated and 17% is saturated. Avocados also have no cholesterol.

But even small doses of saturated fats can still be ok if they get you to eat more vegetables that you'd otherwise skip. My mom had the right idea when we were growing up: bring on the broccoli with hollandaise sauce! Broccoli was the one food we'd be sure to fight over, never any leftovers at our house as long as she served it with our favorite condiment. And hey if a little butter and sugar is what it takes to get those sweet potatoes down or a little glazing on carrots, isn't it worth it? It's still healthier than ice cream or cake.


cross posted at In the Kitchen with Bella

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Too Much Candy

Another item to make you smile. Some things are funny in any language. This video of a little French girl eating candy is priceless.


Too much candy from Capucha on Vimeo.

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Dancing

This is what is making us smile today. (Except when I told Isabella we couldn't play it again because it's lunch time. Then there were tears.)


from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Warning, parents, at the end of the video is the original title in which there is a word that you may not consider appropriate for children. (Where the H*** is Matt?) Also appears if you click through the link to the original site.


Also, Matt explains how the videos came about here (scroll down and there is a three part lecture recording.)

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Jesus the Philosopher King

An interesting blog post at The Evangelical Outpost: Six Thoughts about Jesus.

On of the thoughts:

Some people assume that Jesus was a carpenter while others (on better evidence I believe) think he was a rabbi. Whether he worked with wood or with words, I think it is indisputable that Jesus was a philosopher. As philosopher Dallas Willard wrote in his essay, "Jesus the Logician":

There is in our culture an uneasy relation between Jesus and intelligence, and I have actually heard Christians respond to my statement that Jesus is the most intelligent man who ever lived by saying that it is an oxymoron. Today we automatically position him away from (or even in opposition to) the intellect and intellectual life. Almost no one would consider him to be a thinker, addressing the same issues as, say, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger or Wittgenstein, and with the same logical method.

It truly is then, as Mark Noll once wrote, a "scandal" that evangelicals have failed so miserably in their commanded task of "putting on the mind of Christ." As a group we should be fertile ground for producing intellectuals. After all, we are disciples of the greatest thinker in history.

Reminds me of a little book by Peter Kreeft I read a while back: The Philosophy of Jesus.

It is sad that among other things the protestant reformation acted to sever so many Christians from the Church's intellectual tradition. Of course, reminding people that faith and reason are not incompatible has been one of the primary themes of Pope Benedict's pontificate. We Catholics have a strong intellectual tradition. Not that you'd know it sometimes from the ordinary guy in the pews. It is a scandal for us as well that we are so ignorant of our intellectual heritage and fail miserably to promote it. That's one reason I thought this video was so awesome.


via Jen

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Toddlers and the Nichomachean Ethics

The Philosopher Mom muses about habit formation and discipline:

And I read it all so long ago in Aristotle: the virtuous man is the supremely happy man. To think the Nichomachean Ethics could be true in a toddler house!

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Rust Stains

Last week our hot water suddenly ran rusty for a day or so.I noticed it when I was filling the washing machine for a soak load of Sophia's clothes. Unfortunately, the clothes were in and the washer full before I noticed the strange dark color of the water. Needless to say, I didn't soak them and in fact ran the wash through again immediately after in cold water. And then I was in a hurry when I emptied the washer into the drier and didn't notice that some of the clothes still had rust marks. In fact, I only noticed this evening when I finally got around to folding the clothes to put them away. And just about every cute outfit now has dark waves of rusty rings.

The only advice I've been able to find for removing rust involves soaking the stain in lemon juice and setting the garment to dry in the sun. But I've got an entire load of baby outfits that are stained. I'm talking just about every outfit I own for her, including most of the long-sleeved ones which were still in the bottom of the laundry bag. Treating each stain will take a huge bag of lemons and a lot of time. Anyone know a different method or have suggestions for a shortcut?

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Sophia at Four Months

We had Sophie's 4 month checkup this morning. She weighed in at 13 lbs, 8 oz. and is now 24 inches long. Perfectly healthy and happy. Well, not so happy about getting shots.

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Book Review: A Cry of Stone

It seems I'm going to read Michael O'Brien's Children of the Last Days series completely out of order. But that also seems to be fine as so far each of the books has stood on its own. A Cry of Stone only seems to connect incidentally as far as characters go, though thematically it's of a piece with the rest of the series.

So far this is my favorite novel in the series. Actually, it may well be the best book I've read all year. Though it's almost 900 pages, I couldn't put it down and read it straight through in about three days. It's a rich story and a compelling character. Makes me wonder why Father Elijah is O'Brien's best-known work. I think this one is far deeper. Though it's been a while since I read Father Elijah... I'm going to have to go back and re-read it to really understand how it fits in with the rest of the series.

Anyway, back to A Cry of Stone....The novel's heroine, Rose Wabos is a Native American from northern Ontario, an artist, a visionary, a mystic, a cripple. She struggles both with extreme poverty and with the loss of everyone she loves as well as with a crooked spine. But Rose is a master of offering up her sufferings for others and though she never becomes a mother, she has many spiritual children.

Rose also struggles to develop her own artistic style and language in a world which is determined to pigeonhole her as a native artist but which rejects her Christian faith. The novel is colored by Rose's rich interior life. Although it is primarily a realist narrative, it full of the symbolic language that she develops in her paintings and at times it becomes much more impressionist and symbolist. it is a fascinating critique of the modern art world and yet offers hope that Christian artist's may still make a difference even if they are not recognized by the establishment.

The heart of the novel, however, is an extended meditation on poverty of spirit. Rose's physical poverty is almost incidental in comparison to her growing spiritual poverty. Although she never completely loses faith, she does walk a very dark path. Denied entrance into religious life, stripped of all consolations of friends and family and fame, as well as of spiritual consolations, still she clings all the harder to Christ, who she calls "The Beating Heart."

I feel like any words I can offer are inadequate, so I'll just say: read the book.


My comments on other books in the series:

Strangers and Sojourners

Plague Journal

Evidently I didn't write any comments after reading Father Elijah. Odd.

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A Mother's Prayers

I recently found this prayer tucked away in the back of my Liturgy of the Hours volume. I must have printed it off from some website, but I have no memory of doing so and thus don't recall where I found it. But I've started praying it every morning at the end of my morning devotions.

O God the Father of mankind, who hast given me these my children, and committed them to my charge to bring them up for Thee, and to prepare them for eternal life: help me with Thy heavenly grace, that I may be able to fulfill this most sacred duty and stewardship.

Teach me both, what to give and what to withhold; when to reprove and when to forbear; make me to be gentle, yet firm; considerate and watchful; and deliver me equally from the weakness of indulgence, and the excess of severity; and grant that, both by word and by example, I may be careful to lead them in the ways of wisdom and true piety.

Pour Thy grace into their hearts, and strengthen and multiply in them the gifts of Thy Holy Spirit, that they may daily grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; and so, faithfully serving Thee here, may come to rejoice in Thy presence hereafter.

Amen.

I also pray this prayer to St. Joseph, whose origins I'm also a little foggy on.

O dear and good St. Joseph who so lovingly cared for your little family at Nazareth, pray for all working men and their families. [and especially for Dom and our family, or daddy and our family, if I'm saying it with Bella] Help us all to enjoy a happy Christian family life. Be a father to us all and watch over us even as you cherished the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Holy Child. Patron of the Universal Church, pray for us.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and soul.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I breathe forth my soul in peace with you.

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Ave Maria Salad and the Religious Life of a Toddler

The Hail Mary is definitely Bella's favorite prayer. She says it all the time: when she's flipping through a book, when she's playing with dolly and making dolly 'say grace,' when she hears an ambulance, when she sees a statue of Mary, sometimes for no apparent reason at all. Of course her version is just a jumble of various words. Tonight listening to it, I called it an Ave Maria salad: just toss and serve.

* * *

When Bella hears chant playing, she says, "Music. Music in church." Not sure how she made that connection since to the best of my knowledge she's never heard chant at Mass. Also the Pope John Paul II cd came up in the iTunes shuffle today and I told Bella, "That's Pope John Paul praying." She repeated it back to me adding, "That's John Paul praying at Mass." I definitely didn't tell her that. How she's able to make these connections mystifies me.

* * *

I've taught her to say, "Pray for us," as she looks at and names the various images of saints on her holy cards. One day while she was playing with my necklaces, she held my miraculous medal and said, "That's Holy Mary," as I'd told her, then spontaneously added, "Holy Mary, pray for us." Then looking at my cross, she said, "Jesus on the cross. Jesus, pray for us." Not thinking that was entirely appropriate, I taught her to say, "Jesus, I trust in you." Now she sweetly says, "Jesus, I trust in you," not only when looking at my cross but spontaneously throughout the day. It is so sweet, makes my heart melt.

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Reading Notes on The Religious Potential of the Child Ch 7

Prayer

Not yet participating fully at Mass, prayer is the principal way [children] nourish their baptismal life and prepare, at the same time, for active involvement in the Mass, the highest and most complete form of prayer.

First, Cavaletti says, we should become aware of how children pray, be careful not to "impose our own prayer guidelines on children" lest we extinguish "spontaneous expression of their relationship with God and give rise to the idea that when we pray we say certain fixed things."

This makes sense to me. In children's literature many child-protagonists' failed relationships with God are the result of an idea of fixed prayers that are empty of meaning for a child. Also reminds me of C.S. Lewis' account of his failures and frustrations with prayer when he was a child.

For the most part, children's prayer is expressed with few words, in short and essential phrases.

The adult should learn how to wait, convinced that silence is also prayer, and that it is in silence that the spoken expression germinates. The adult should learn to be respectful of the child's rhythm, which is much slower than our own.

True in all dealings with children. Their conversation proceeds at a much slower pace. I've noticed this when talking with Bella, especially when she's recounting things that have happened in the past. She needs a certain amount of time to pause and think but she's not necessarily done speaking, just gathering her thoughts, reflecting and dwelling in her memories.

The prayer of children up to the age of seven or eight is almost exclusively prayer of thanksgiving and praise. The adult who tries to lead the child to prayers of petition falsifies and distorts the child's religious expression. The child feels no need to ask because he knows himself to be in the peaceful possession of certain goods.

I suppose we've kind of followed this rule. While our bedtime prayers do include petitionary prayer, that is led by Dom or myself. We don't expect Bella to participate in that. She does spontaneously join in the very simple, "God bless," sorts of petitions: God bless mommy, daddy, granddad, Father Murphy, etc.


Magical Prayer

If children's prayer is--as it is--essentially thanksgiving and praise, it cannot be magical in nature. I realize I am making an affirmation in contrast to what has been stated by eminent scholars in the field; however, the fact is that in more than twenty-five years of observation I have not seen magical prayer in children, that is a prayer that tends to bend the divine will to one's own advantage.

...magic would appear to be a deviated manifestation, an indicator of an encounter with God that is not satisfying, or, better an indication that the person of God has not been presented in a way that satisfies the child.

This seems to be in response to a concern that I've not previously been aware of, not knowing the claims of the eminent scholars. I guess I've heard of magical prayer, but not in connection with children. Though I can think of many examples in literature: Huck Finn rejects both God and prayer precisely because the image of God he has been taught is so unsatisfactory. His idea of prayer is definitely magical and he has been alienated by the failure of petitionary prayer to yield immediate results. But it does seem a fairly obvious that such thinking is the result of an poor understanding of God, one which is profoundly unsatisfactory to a child.

How to Help Children's Prayer

what the adult can do is to establish the premises that will help prayer to arise. Such premises should be as indirect in character as possible, so as to allow the greatest space for the child's personal response.

Sort of like Charlotte Mason's masterful inactivity. Also reminds me of making introductions at a party of two people you hope will hit it off. You do just enough to get the ball rolling and then step out of the way.

Prayer, before it is the response of the person, is first the listening to God, thus we believe the "kerygma" [proclamation] is the departure point for an initiation to prayer.

[it] is the means with which the catechist is enabled to give the child's prayer the necessary nourishment: knowledge of God's word and His great deeds with regard to man, leaving the child to find his own response.

True for everyone, not just children. In everything God initiates and we respond.

The tasks of the catechist and parent are distinct and complementary: Without the help of parents, prayer risks being removed from the child's personal everyday life, by concentrating too exclusively on certain areas even if they are the great gestures of God in the history of mankind; without the catechist there is the danger that prayer will become impoverished within confines that are too limited and too personalized.

I can see the first part, the necessity of the parent. Catechesis outside the home is not enough, the parent must be the primary educator, especially in matters of living the faith, modeling that life of faith for the child. The second, the necessity of the catechist doesn't seem as obvious to me since I'm coming at this with the assumption that I, the parent, will also be the catechist.

We think formulae may be a useful means in the education to prayer' nevertheless, it is not without dangers. In our estimation, formulae should not be given until we are sure the child has that interior agility we mentioned, through which prayer is a genuine and spontaneous expression. An untimely use of fomulae can stifle the child's personal expression and send his spirit into the worst of sleeps.

Does she mean the child should never be exposed to formulae in any setting, or merely that they are not the proper subject of the catechesis at this stage? In the home formulaic prayers, such as the rosary, may well be a part of family devotions which unite the domestic church as a body and I cannot see that it is at all desirable that a family exclude the younger members from its corporate prayer life. In fact I think it is a positive good that the youngest children play as active a part as they are able in the prayer life of the family, that they be contributing members of the prayer community to the extent that they are able. And because of the way that young children naturally learn, if a family is in the habit of praying together, they will know many of the prayers by heart simply by nature of their repetition. It's hard to tell from what Cavaletti says here what she would think of that.

We give these very short passages so that the child can listen to them, begin to make them his own, and transcribe them if he wishes to and knows how to write. We do not spoil it be making the children memorize; this will happen naturally through the spontaneous repetition of a passage that is particularly striking.

Are the children assumed to be blank slates coming in to the catechesis? Are they not hearing and learning any prayers at home? How can one prevent young children from absorbing many of the common "formula" prayers unless they don't exist in his world outside of the catechesis experience? Bella already knows most of the Hail Mary, just from listening to us pray it. Or am I just over-reading this and should not assume that her failure to address the role of family formation doesn't imply an absence of the same?

It is our custom to present prayer formulae in connection with a point of kerygma as one form among many possible responses to what God has given us to know.

There should be a wide selection of formulae for their use; the opportunity to choose helps the child's inner adhesion to what is being said.

I suppose this clarifies somewhat. It isn't so much no formulae being taught at all as them being presented in a limited way and the child deciding on his own when to make use of them.


The Language of Prayer

"providing children with single words with which he may build his own prayer."

"every human activity...has in some way its own vocabulary, which does not enclose the individual action in a separate compartment but helps to express its unity."

she proposes prophetic names in Isaiah, also "Son of God", "The Almighty," "The Holy One," etc.

"a similar work of "nomenclature" may be done with children under three years of age, that is, during the period when the child builds his own vocabulary and is avid to learn new words."

Not clear how this latter would be done.


The Environment

prayer space with images, preferably three-dimensional, changed in relation to themes and liturgical year

prayer cloth of liturgical color, should be changed by children in solemn way

children care for space bring flowers, light candles, etc

The prayer are is not a substitute for chapel or church, but it is a very important place for the education to prayer because it is here-- more than in a chapel or church--that the child is completely comfortable and his expression will be easier and more spontaneous.

I'm a little dubious about that "more comfortable." I suspect some children would be quite at ease in a church and not at all hindered in spontaneous expression, especially if allowed to linger at some time outside of Mass when they will not disturb other worshipers. Of course, I can see that such times might not be readily available to children and so it is desirable to have space set aside where they may pray without interruption.

The whole prayer space thing is alien to my experience and I feel a little suspicious of it. On the one hand, I can understand the idea of a space set apart, a space that encourages prayer and reflection. On the other hand, it also seems kind of artificial and maybe a little cheesy.


Fixed Hours of Prayer

we think that a constant religious recall during the child's day (for example, before eating, before going to bed) may be a useful support in case prayer should be forgotten or overlooked. Nonetheless, we should not give the child the impression that one is to pray only at certain times.

Celebrations

two kinds of celebration one that closely follows Liturgy, another extemporaneous.

in liturgucal

we should be as faithful as possible to the liturgical structure, in such a way that these clebrations are not only an occasion for the children to pray, but also an occasion for their initiation into the living participation in the Liturgy.

The children have in this way points of reference that will help them orient themselves when they come to participate in the liturgy with the adult community.

extemporaneous:

in the cases where there is no structure, we need not create it. We should try to make the celebration adhere as closely as possible to what we want to celebrate, and try to make it an authentic expression of the feeling of that moment.

not be restricted to younger children but lived by both old and younger children together

catechist launches idea and offers hints "leaving the children the task of seeking out the form that corresponds to their feelings."


Silence

"an essential element in the education to prayer is silence."

not only during time when one is praying

a real education to silence, which is not just the more or less imposed cessation of noise but the silence that becomes something the child searches for and loves, the silence in which the child feels totally at home.

it is an interior silence, one that responds to the child's unspoken request to help to be recollected. therefore it should not be asked of the children when we sense they are not disposed toward it; silence is not an aid for the teacher to bring the class to order; it is a help to the meditiative spirit of the child.

Here she briefly returns to the problem of controls from ch 4:

There is no possibility [or desirability] for an academic kind of control... prayer can offer us a way of examining our work, in the sense that if the children's prayer is impoverished and empty it means the proclamation was not well given on our part. perhaps the content was poor and did not relate to the exigencies of the children's age; maybe it was not proclaimed with a sufficiently religious spirit. Therefore the problem of controls, if we may speak of them at all, concerns our way of doing catechesis, and what should be refined is not the children's prayer but our own work.

A final thought: The catechesis as it has been developed assumes a tightly controlled environment, the Atrium into which the catechist judiciously introduces the elements one at a time in a predetermined sequence. What Cavaletti describes in the book seems to me an environment essentially foreign to the domestic church. In the home such circumspection I think is neither achievable nor desirable. It seems to me thus far that there are many elements which might be adaptable from the CGS method but that some for of adaptation is definitely necessary in order to use CGS in an environment other than the atrium. Sounds like a lot of work.

Additional Reading Notes to The Religious Potential of the Child by Sophia Cavaletti:

Introduction and Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Read the rest of the entry...

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That was odd

Well, after I administered the Tylenol, Bella's fever went down fairly quickly and she really perked up. She spent some time eating frozen grapes on the couch and drinking ice water while watching Madagascar and I was preparing to settle in to sick-nurse mode for the long haul. But before the movie was over she was up and running around, following me to the kitchen and asking for crackers and cinnamon toast. I kept waiting all night for the fever and crankiness to return as the tylenol wore off, but they never did. Today she seems her usual self.

I've heard of 24-hour bugs but I guess this was a 3 hour flu. All I can say is kids are amazingly resilient.

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Isabella and the Liturgy of the Hours

Recently when I pray Morning Prayer, I've started calling out one or two of the antiphons to Isabella, having her repeat it to me, and then I repeat it after each verse of the psalm and she echoes it back. She loves doing this, always smiles as she says the words of the prayer. And I love hearing her pray with me.

My favorite was the first time I did it. It was during the Easter season, I believe. She was being very chatty as I was trying to pray and so I started reading aloud very slowly so as to engage her. I said, "The cross of the Lord is the Tree of Life." and she echoed back, "Cross is Tree of 'ife!" and repeated it again and again with very little prompting from me.

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Sick Bella (Updated)

My girl who never gets sick is running a 102 fever. We came home from the bank this morning and rather than running about on the porch with her usual abandon while I sat and read, she stood near my chair and whined-- not fussing for anything, just whimpering.

We came inside and she curled up on the couch next to me as I nursed Sophie, which she never does. I read her a Pooh story and she cuddled close, whining occasionally. When I put Sophie down, she climbed onto my lap and fell asleep. I thought she maybe felt a little warm and she was definitely acting off, so I stuck a thermometer under her arm. Sure enough.

I've dosed her with tylenol and now she's having some ice water and frozen grapes. I'm not used to dealing with sick kids. Feel rather helpless.

Update:

I love tylenol, it's a wonder drug. Fever is gone and perky girl is playing happily again.

Of course, now sinks are running brown water.

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Finding Faith on the Web

A great article from Jen is up at Inside Catholic: Google and Ye Shall Find: The Internet and the New Evangelization:

Having a background in Web site development and marketing, and having observed Internet culture for years, I believe a strong case can be made that the particular type of communication that the Internet facilitates will lead lost souls to discover truth more readily than any medium that has come before it.

Read it here.

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God Bless Chickens...

...God bless turkeys, God bless sheeps....

This morning I met up with my sister-in-law and another mom in her homeschooling group to go strawberry picking with all the kids. As it turned out the farm in our town closes the strawberry patches on Monday and Tuesday to let them recover from the weekend so we didn't actually pick strawberries. The kids ran around in the field, playing games and picking up sticks and leaves and dandelions and clover and then we looked at the animals: emus and sheep, chickens, turkeys and peacocks. We bought strawberries at the farm store because I couldn't go home without them, Isabella had been told we were getting strawberries and would have been heartbroken (and screamed all the way home).

So tonight during bedtime prayers she began her usual litany, remembering all the highlights of the day. I've been working on channeling them into prayers so she usually adds, "God bless," to the beginning of each item on the list: God bless cousins (whom she lists by name), God bless chickens, turkeys, sheeps, bench, raisins, cup, water, flowers, strawbries, and then on into the further past, remembering seagulls and swans at the park a few weeks ago, the playground, the swimming pool, and back to her cousins again.... She'd go on all night if we let her.

How precious these little lists are! How she hoards her memories and pulls them out throughout the day like gleaming treasures to be admired. Waiting as she recites each item for me to repeat it back to her. Or, if I'm too slow on the uptake, repeating it herself again and again until I acknowledge her memory as a true one. Truly God has blessed my little girl, giving her such a beautiful world to revel in.

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Surviving the Chaos, Joyfully

Sophie, my baby who slept through the night in her second week home from the hospital, has been having trouble sleeping recently. I've been tired and cranky having a nursing baby in my bed all night. And yesterday was one of those days. I'd had only one or two baby-free hours of sleep. I woke with an itching between the fingers on my left hand that told me I'd failed to get all the mango juice off and was now going to be suffering from a rash for the next week or so. Isabella had wet through her diaper and her pjs were soaked and so were her sheets and blankets. Sophie's diaper had overflowed on her outfit and she had to be changed. Both girls were crying as I staggered into the kitchen to start breakfast. I broke a glass opening the dishwasher. I had no clean clothes as I'd failed to put a load in the washing machine the night before. I kept muttering under my breath: "I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day."

Or, I reminded myself, I could pray. And so I did. "God," I muttered as I looked at myself in the mirror, the wailing from two children muted by the closed door, "God, I'm going to need a big heaping helping of patience today. Please help me get through this."

I scarfed down my bowl of oatmeal, grabbed screaming Sophia and headed to the living room to nurse her. Got to start today off with a prayer, I said as I grabbed my Liturgy of the Hours.

And you know what, we got through it. It started to rain as we headed out the door to the pharmacy to pick up more night-time diapers and toothpaste. But we didn't melt. And eventually there was that blissful afternoon nap when I snuggled with Sophie in my bed while Isabella slept soundly in the other room.

And I was also glad to have read Katherine's beautiful reflection about sacrifice and the vocation of motherhood, because it helped me to get through the day and reminded me to pray and to offer up my frustrations as a part of my vocation: My Gift is Chaos

So I cannot offer missed meals or refused drinks or hours on my knees before the tabernacle. But I can offer the spills of Apple Juice or Chocolate Milk and the night wakings when I cannot walk straight due to sleepiness or the squeegie diapers that explode on my skirt or even just one of those days when Cecilia needs extra attention and Felicity is teething and I am just one chaotic tornado whirling from one room to another trying to keep both girls happy and make sure both know how much they are loved. It is those moments of unplanned, unchosen chaos that I am called to offer with love and joy. Joyful chaos is my sacrifice. Joyful chaos is my gift.

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Classical Learning and Higher Education

The New Learning that Failed: On the value of classical learning

To add to the files of items diagnosing the ills of the modern academy. An interesting article that examines what exactly has been lost in universities since the classical idea of education has been jettisoned.

A couple of excerpts:

In acknowledgment of such frequent controversies and loud revisionism, the compromise is that “Western civilization” continues to metamorphose into something known as “World Civilizations”: India, China, Africa, and the New World merit roughly the same attention in the university core curriculum as the West, inasmuch as they are merely “different,” hardly less influential in the formation of Western and now global civilization. The end result is that today’s students cannot distinguish the role of Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero in the later development of political thought from the general irrelevance of Native American councils or indigenous African tribal meetings. Indeed, to do so would require both reading The Republic and having the courage to suggest informal tribal decision-making is not constitutional government.

Somewhere in all this two truths of the ancient world that had once served as the bedrock of the university were lost. The West, alone of world cultures, was self-critical and introspective, curious about other civilizations, ready to turn its own empirical standards on itself, always attempting to match its idealism with actual fact—Socrates teaching about the vanities of the wealthy, Antigone the bias of the male chauvinist, Aristophanes the contradiction of democratic egalitarianism, or Tacitus and Sallust the use of Western military power for nefarious purposes. Indeed, professors and students are now denouncing perceived Western pathologies only through a tradition of Western empiricism and free expression of thought, unavailable elsewhere.

Read the whole article here.

h/t Melissa Wiley

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The Religious Potential of the Child Reading Notes Ch 6

The Historical Events in the Life of Jesus Christ

In introducing children to the Bible, Cavaletti feels it is best to begin with the life of Christ, not with retracing the development of the covenant between God and man through its successive stages.

In our estimation, children should be initiated into their present religious reality, and fundamental to it is the presence of a mediator through whom we go to the Father. Moreover, in order to approach the Old Testament it is necessary to be able to move easily within time, and to be able to imagine customs and habits different from our own. What impression would a child receive, for example, from the account of the sacrifice of Isaac, without knowing or being able to understand that there were cultures in which the offering of a son in sacrifice was an act deemed pleasing to their deity? We maintain that the children's initiation into the Old Testament should not begin before the age of eight.

While I think it generally does make sense to begin with Christ, I'm not sure I entirely agree with holding off on the OT until age 8. I think younger children can begin to grasp God's love for mankind in the Old Testament and that God acts through history. God as creator, God as lawgiver, God who rescues his people when they are in distress.

Cavaletti advocates "concentrating solely on the passages the theological meaning of which the child can penetrate.... we cannot separate theology from history in the Bible, for if we did we would be unfaithful to the message."

She says that to give a child narrative passages when he cannot understand the theology is to risk making them into fairy tales. But I'm not clear why it is a bad thing for the Bible to be a book of stories for a child, even if he doesn't fully understand that it is history, that these stories are real in a way that fairy tales are not. Then again, doesn't the Montessori method in general avoid fairy tales and stories of that sort? I'm not sure I understand it and without understanding the rationale, it seems rather silly.

In our view it is a mistake to give children texts that are predominantly, if not exclusively, narrative in nature. As a matter of fact we think that the more articulated and detailed the narration, the greater the risk that it will obstruct the children from reaching its depth.

I suppose she has more experience with how children relate to the materials presented. Perhaps this is wisdom gained from observation. If so, there are no anecdotes to support these claims.

I suppose I could see keeping Bible stories out of the catechesis program if they don't seem to add much to a child's growing relationship with God; but it there real harm done if they enjoy the Bible stories as narrative now outside of the catechesis and later have them integrated into it? Surely one can't and shouldn't keep children from hearing the Bible stories, especially in a homeschooling context or a family context in which the whole family gathers to listen to readings. I'm thinking especially of traditions like the Jesse Tree in Advent which involve the whole family. It seems silly and impractical to segregate younger children from older in this matter. The Bible is the word of God and while we may choose which parts to focus more closely on with children at different stages, I don't think we should prevent them from listening to whatever parts are presented to the community at large.

I do not think it right that the child first know certain facts, and only at a later time enter into their theological significance. I believe that an event learned only as a story (or legend) will stay a story even when the child is grown, and it will be extremely difficult to recover its theological content later on.

This seems to fly in the face of the entire history of catechesis and certainly is contradicted by my own experience and the experiences of most adults I know. Children have always learned their Bible stories from an early age and somehow managed to learn to plumb their theological depths appropriately as they grow in understanding. Certainly, if the stories are never re-introduced later when the children gain in their ability to understand their theological significance, they will remain only fables. I certainly have seen much evidence of that happening. But in those cases I would think the blame lies not in the stories being introduced too early but in insufficient time being given to unpacking their meaning at the appropriate time.

She suggest using children's drawings as a guide to judge their readiness: "If the child, in relation to a specific biblical passage, only knows how to draw descriptive rather than interpretive illustrations, then it is better to avoid that text; it is obvious his understanding has stayed on a level of superficiality." Again, I can see this as a guide to developing an age-appropriate formal catechetical program; but it seems impractical in terms of an actually lived faith in the domestic church and homeschool.

The Prophecies

Thus for children under six CGS limits Old Testament to "a selection of a few, short prophetic passages during the season of Advent."

Prophetic language is composed of images and consequently corresponds very well to the capacities of even young children.

She cites Isaiah, "the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light" as it connects to the image of Christ the Light. Also the text from Isaiah that announces the light bearer as a child with wonderful names: "Wonder Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

What seems important to us is that the texts be few in number, brief in length and formulated in images.

Our aim is to offer images and expression that are striking to and readily grasped by the children.

She adds that the various names of the Messiah furnish the child with a language of prayer.


The Incarnation

In the New Testament focus on parables, and events of birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ; but greatly restrict discussion of miracles:

It seems to us that the particular power Jesus manifested in working miracles should not be separated from the consideration of that power He continues to exercise through the Church. But to achieve this unity with the children has proved difficult up to the present. On the other hand, the miracles considered on their own can tempt the children, in our view, into the world of magic that many assert to be indivisible from the religiousness of the young child; however it is a quality we
have never seen in children, except for that magic which has been induced by the adult.

This part, frankly, mystifies me. I don't understand the caution. Again, I have a vague notion that Montessori frowns on fairy stories and tales with magic in them. I don't have a problem with either and I don't see why it should be problematic. Though it seems like she might address this matter further in later chapters.

The events of Christ's infancy appear rather difficult due to the misuse that is generally made of them by often telling them (with many diminutives!) as if they were beautiful fables.

She's lost me again. I'm more of the Lewis Tolkien school of Jesus' life being the "true myth". Is that really beyond children's grasp?

The Lucan texts we have been speaking about also emphasize a great contrast; many expressions have an awesome grandeur, others refer to a very simple reality... These contrasts are not without significance; they bring us face to face with the wonderful reality of the Child: son of woman, like each one of us, and Son of God!

The catechist should have this contrast in mind when speaking with the children, so as to lead them to ask themselves, full of wonder: But who can this Child be? In this way we will accustom the children to the fact that the biblical text contains something to be discovered, which is to be read in depth, which is not readily exhaustible. In this way we will educate the children to humility in facing the Word of God.

I rather like this idea. Though am not exactly clear how it plays out in practice.

Meditation and Prayer on the Mystery of the Incarnation

As with parables, episodes presented one at a time, narrated in catechist's own words, then gospel read solemnly and that followed by a reflection. "we should feel ourselves personally involved in the listening and the response to the text."

sample reflection included:

"The words the angel proclaimed to the Mother of God are addressed to us as well, to me too. How shall we respond? Mary expressed her joy saying: 'My soul magnifies the Lord!' Her joy is mine too.... And how shall I express it?... The Magi came to the crib after a long journey. They knelt down before Him, they worshiped Him and brought Him gifts. But now we too are around the crib. I am here too. What shall we do? What shall we say?"

Introduce samples of prayer: the angel's greeting (beginning of the Hail Mary), Magnificat, Gloria of angels, Nunc Dimittis of Simeon.

I like this idea. Praying with scripture. This is of course the basis for the Liturgy of the Hours. I am accustomed to praying the Magnificat at Evening Prayer and Nunc Dimittis at Night Prayer. I'm already in the habit of reciting a short antiphon occasionally and having Bella repeat it as I say my prayers. She enjoys it and it seems quite a natural way for her to pray.

Such examples should be offered to the children with great discretion so as not to stifle their own personal prayer. If we wish to give the Magnificat, for instance, we restrict ourselves to suggesting only the first verse

I agree that children should learn to pray in their own words, in set prayers, and in the words of scripture. I can see why suggesting short verses is most appropriate for young people. Not so sure about the idea of stifling their prayer with words of scripture.

We give a text like this as one example among many of the ways one may respond to God, as a stimulus to personal prayer, so that each person finds in his own heart his response to the Lord Who speaks to His creatures.

This is of course the basic idea of Lectio Divina: the scripture is the starting point of the conversation, a stimulus to prayer. I think this is well put.

The material for the infancy narratives is different from that for parables:

The figures are three-dimensional, and the historical character of these events permits and requires research into details to make the scene more living. The difference between parable and historical events should be clear even from the material itself.

Interesting. It wasn't clear from earlier chapters that parable materials were two-dimensional.

Material reconstructions help children who can't read to recall biblical content. Much like stained glass and other figurative narratives in older churches. But interactive as children are hands-on learners.

Cites child who prays before crib: "I say to him: Allelulia to the mighty God."

Expressions like these are a warning for us not to use baby talk with children, not to minimize what they know how to receive in all its greatness. We have observed how easily we speak in diminutives, whereas the child speaks of "the mighty God."

Definitely agree with this. Adults too often underestimate what very young children are capable of.

The drawings of the children unite the child Jesus and the Good Shepherd... another demonstration that the children do not stop at the fact itself, but rather through it they contemplate the mystery of Christ's person.

Biblical Geography

In our view it is important that the historical events also have materials relative to their geographical reconstruction in order to let the children know how to situate them in a point in space. This material helps them to concretize the events.

I was talking about this idea the other day with Dom. I think I would have benefited from some map work. It wasn't until shockingly late that I made connections between biblical narratives and geography and history in my other classes. Religion and the Bible were always pigeonholed for me and did not connect to what I thought of as "real history". This in relation to Indiana Jones. I don't think when I first saw the movie I really had any idea what the Ark was supposed to be, how it connected to the Bible, where everything was supposed to take place. The idea of putting Biblical events on a map was really quite foreign to me. Of course a major advantage to homeschooling is being able to dismantle the artificial separation between different areas of knowledge.

materials: globe of world, dry land is white only color is red of Israel.
plastic relief model of Palestine
relief model of city of Jerusalem

re events of the passion restricted to indicating location of Cenacle, house of Caiaphas, Antonia Tower, Temple, Garden of Olives, Calvary, tomb of resurrection.

texts with details of the passion should not be given to children:

At times these passages go into details that arouse horror, such as we could not bear in relation to anyone dear to us; why then should we dwell on them with respect to Jesus? We risk inciting sentiments that should not be aroused. We concentrate on the Last Supper, the death and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I suppose age-appropriate is the factor. I suppose the assumption must be that children will naturally hear the accounts of the passion at Mass, but we don't invite them to meditate on them outside of that?

The Death and Resurrection

is when the Good Shepherd parable is rooted in history.

the proclamation of the death of Christ should never be disjoined from the announcement of His resurrection... we do not even pause temporarily on the death alone, considering it perhaps it a well-known fact that the death was followed by the resurrection

Absolutely.

Death is a common event; many men have had the courage to face death for love of their brothers. What is absolutely new is that in Jesus, death is followed by renewed and eternal life

it seems appropriate to avoid long accounts of the passion in order to balance the length of the passion narration with the account of the resurrection.

form should follow meaning, to emphasize resurrection one must in a way de-emphasize the passion. I can see this with children. Too long a meditation on the passion might swallow the resurrection and lessen its impact.

The parables leas especially to meditation and through it to prayer; the infancy narrative lead more directly to personal and spontaneous prayer; the paschal events adapt themselves especially to be lived by the children in more structured celebrations.... frequently retrace the great services of Holy Week and Easter triduum... become a direct initiation into the Liturgy of the Church.

Pentecost

Our catechesis is Christocentric, as we have said, but it is obviously Christological-Trinitarian. The person of the Father is illuminated particularly through the Mass: it is the Father who sends us the gift of Christ's presence, and it is to the Father that we make our offering as the expression of our gratitude. We also speak of the Father especially in relation to the Annunciation...

The Holy Spirit's work appears obvious to them, and they know how to recognize it spontaneously in the most important moments... it is through the spirit that Jesus was born and raised from the dead-- and also through the liturgies of Eucharist and Baptism. Therefore the children know the Holy Spirit's work both in the person of Jesus Christ Himself and in His continuing work within the Church.

What has been particularly enlightening for the children in relation to the holy Spirit is to see His action in the Eucharistic presence. When we hit on this point there was what Montessori would have called an "explosion": Starting with this essential aspect, the children then knew how to see with ease the Spirit's many other manifestations.

Finally:

The presentation of sacred scripture--parables of historical narratives-- should never be disunited from prayer, in a structured or unstructured form. The proclamation is complete when it has been received, and, in one form or another, when it has been given a response.

This would seem to require a great deal of deliberation on the part of the catechist. The point isn't to impart information but to proclaim the person of Christ, to initiate the child into prayer. This is so much more demanding than most classroom-based catechesis, which means well but misses this most important dimension. If the proclamation fails to result in prayer, then what really has been communicated? Not the presence of the living God who is Truth, merely dry, lifeless facts that have no connection to the inner life of the child and that fail to connect the child to God.

Additional Reading Notes to The Religious Potential of the Child by Sophia Cavaletti:

Introduction and Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

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Catholic, Reluctantly

Catholic, Reluctantly by Christian M. Frank is the first in the new John Paul 2 High series edited by Regina Doman and published by Sophia Institute Press.

Imagio Catholic Fiction seeks to counter the despair, cynicism, and amorality of today's youth fiction with stories for young readers that feed faith and build virtue.

Our books are not disguised sermons but compelling stories told in a contemporary voice: entertaining young readers while at the same time presenting to them a moral universe in which God is real and active, and in which religion, family, and friendship are goods to be reverenced.

Slightly reminiscent of Madeleine L'Engle's Austen series; but with a focus on school rather than family. The novel follows two students, George and Allie who have just started at JP2 high. It is a tiny school-- only 7 students!-- founded by a group of Catholic parents after one of the parents was fired from the local Catholic high school for teaching Humanae Vitae.

As advertised, the novel does not read like a sermon. It had characters I could identify with, real people not plaster saints. For example, when a practical joke sends a group of the students to evangelize the local public school, they are all uncomfortable at being put on the spot and the only guy to pass out the leaflets was using them to chat up cute girls. I'm shy and hate being put on the spot and would definitely not do well in a similar situation. It was reassuring that the students were likewise ill at ease. I couldn't have related to the happy missionary type.

Both George and Allie struggle with their parents' decisions to pull them out of their former schools (George from a local Catholic high school, Allie from a public school.) as well as with fitting in at their new school and trying to come to terms with their Catholic identity. Also each of them faces a series of moral dilemmas, the major conflict centering around the wrestling team at the local public high school that George and fellow JP2er, Brian, join.

Allie has been pulled from public school because she was the victim of a violent attack. She doesn't know much of anything about her faith, though she is nominally Catholic. Allie's boyfriend is the wrestling team captain and of course in the course of the book she faces a choice between her new friends at JP2 High and her boyfriend and old circle of friends at the public school.

I liked that the Catholic kids at JP2 are self-aware about their faith but also about how they must seem to the outsider, Allie. "we must seem really weird to you," Celia, the principal's daughter says on the first day of classes. And later, when Allie asks, "Can't you guys look at anything without thinking of Mary, or Jesus, or something?" Celia and George pretend to be zombies, joking, "We... can't....help it," and, "we're...Catholic."

The novel is very up to date, with the characters text messaging back and forth (which might make it soon dated as technology advances). At times it rides the line, seeming a little too earnest to be relevant. But every time it started to seem like too much, it pulled back just enough.

One touch I really liked, that actually won me over, was a poem by David Craig that is introduced on the first day of class that personifies Truth as a sort of jokester:

If it's there, it will stick a foot out
as you pass; he will hold his side laughing
as you fall...
It will be more than you expected.

But then, of course, you must decide
what you're going to do with him.
He might start to follow you around --

You can just picture him
down on the corner with the boys
trying to fit in-- your friends will hate him

No sir,
you won't be able to take him anywhere.

The poem starts to haunt Allie; "The Truth Guy" becomes her developing conscience. It's really the theme of the novel, I suppose. Truth is that uncomfortable tag-along that you don't want to introduce to your friends, that eventually makes you decide between him and your friends. Anyhow, I like the image and I liked the way the novel picked it up and ran with it, making the truth almost a character.



A while back Dom received a review copy of a book from a Catholic author and passed it on to me to read and review because it wasn't really his sort of book. Well, I didn't really like it. It felt forced, the kind of overtly Catholic book in which the author's message gets in the way of the storytelling. The character spent too much time thinking about being Catholic, thinking about moral issues, in a way that didn't seem at all necessary to the story and felt forced onto him from without rather than arising in an organic way. The novel also had some structural issues and I just didn't click with the characters or the plot. I couldn't find a nice way of saying any of this and I didn't want to trash the book after the author had given it to me for free, so I dropped it and said nothing. Today, I might be better able to articulate the issues without sounding negative, but at the time I really couldn't.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that the issues that book had, the kinds of issues that generally make me leery of overtly Catholic fiction, don't exist in Catholic, Reluctantly. Or at least the Catholic stuff doesn't get in the way of my enjoying the story.

One thing that actually helps Catholic, Reluctantly in that regard is, in fact, the genre. As a school story, it necessarily has a certain sort of structure and that framework guides the story and gives a reason for the overt Catholicity in the problems the characters face. Because the nove