The Danger of Lethargy in Learning

by Lynette

“Exactly why this picture gives me greater pleasure than if no such imagery were presented by the divine books, since the topic is the same, and the lesson the same, it is difficult to say; this, however, is another question entirely. But no one disputes that it is much more pleasant to learn lessons presented through imagery, and much more rewarding to discover meanings that are won only with difficulty. Those who fail to discover what they are looking for suffer from hunger, whereas those who do not look, because they have it in front of them, often die of boredom. In both situations, the danger is lethargy. It is a wonderful and beneficial thing that the Holy Spirit organized the holy scripture so as to satisfy hunger by means of its plainer passages and remove boredom by means of its obscurer ones.”

Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching, R.P.H., trans, Book II, sec. 13-15

I love this quote by Augustine. It makes me laugh and also gets to the heart of a wonderful truth. It is far more pleasant to learn lessons presented through imagery. What does he mean by imagery here? He is certainly not talking about literal pictures or paintings. No, he is talking about imagery as presented in the written word (specifically Scripture).

How do we avoid lethargy in our school lessons? Don’t offer pre-digested ideas. Offer real thoughts in their original, pure form. We’re not interested in compendiums of facts. We’re interested in imagery. Or at least we should be. Unfortunately, many of us were only ever fed predigested textbook information so we struggle when confronted with original thoughts. I’m so thankful that my children have the pleasure of reading real books for their school lessons. It’s so much more complicated to tell people what we do for school of course, but if you’re curious, we largely follow the recommendations given by AmblesideOnline.

Also, I quoted this passage in the paper I presented last year at the Davenant House Regional Convivium. This presentation was just posted on Davenant Institute’s Common Places podcast if you’d like to listen to the whole thing.

The Colossal Vitality of His Illusion

by Lynette

One wintry day, while driving along in our van, I heard my 4 and 2 year old in the backseat, belting out the Blues Clues theme song and laughing hysterically.

“We can do anything that we wanna do!”

They both immediately saw the ridiculousness of this statement.

“We can’t do anything we wanna do!”
“God tells us what we wanna do!”
“No! God tells us what we need to do!”

Without getting into the weeds of our needs and wants being in alignment, I was very thankful to hear this conversation from my children. They may struggle with their fleshly wants and desires just as much as all of us, but they also understood at some level how ridiculous it is to believe that, “You can do anything you wanna’ do!” or “be anything you want to be!” or “… just believe in yourself!”

So did F. Scott Fitzgerald. Or at the very least, he portrayed it so very well when he wrote The Great Gatsby.

I just read this book for the first time and I have to say I’m quite thankful to have waited until now. My education did not prepare me to read literature well and I would have completely misunderstood this novel if I had read it earlier in life. Not that I would have been tempted to follow the ugly immorality it portrays (it’s definitely not presented in an attractive light). But I wouldn’t have understood why F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a book about it and I would have rejected it as a bad book.

Instead (and thanks to reading the book along with the Close Reads Podcast), I see the parallels between Mr. Gatsby’s dream world and the whole idea of the American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us a peek into a world of people pursuing this dream, achieving this dream, and experiencing the disillusionment of letdown as this dream does not live up to its grandeur.

When Jay Gatsby finally held in his hands the object of his long pursuit, it didn’t have the sparkle and shine he had imagined. Nick Carraway tells us in lovely prose:

“His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”

Carraway continues:

“As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams-not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Pursuing your dreams is a dangerous thing. We all know the kinds of ridiculous things we can conjure up in our dreams. I can imagine all of the beautiful things I will say and do, how amazing I will be, how everyone will admire me, and what a perfect existence I will live. It’s embarrassing to remember the things I’ve imagined about my future in my mind. Pride is ugly.

Jay Gatsby had a dream that he pursued at all costs. And what did he actually get? Well, I don’t like to spoil books so I’ll just leave it there.

Of course it’s easy to see that the idea of achieving your dreams is dangerous when one wants something sinful. Clearly, a dream which involves underhanded dealings and the pursuit of someone else’s wife is a bad dream to pursue. Clearly, sin is not something we should be pursuing. But what about “harmless” dreams? We like to dream of riches, a life of ease, children who obey perfectly, a spouse who lives up to the reputation of every praise we’ve heard of all other spouses, a house which stays magically clean, honest employees, friends who stay in touch, a perfect church community and on and on the list goes.

What’s wrong with these dreams?

They’re not rooted in reality.

Bonhoeffer said,

“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.”Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer’s thoughts apply to our dreams beyond the Christian community as well. It’s easy to love your dream of a perfect spouse. But what happens when your spouse turns out to be a sinner who can’t read your mind any more than you can read theirs? It’s easy to love your dream of perfect children. But what happens when those children stand in front of you mirroring all of your sin defiantly in your face? It’s easy to love your dream of the perfect life. It’s easy to think you could love your life more if you hadn’t been dealt a bad hand. But can you love the life the Lord has given you? Can you do the things He has called you to do?

I finished Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus at about the same time as I finished The Great Gatsby and the parallel astounded me once I saw it. Both of these books portrayed men who were very talented, very good at achieving their goals, and very diligent in their pursuits of their empty dreams. And both of these men [I’m dreadfully sorry, but this SPOILER can’t be avoided] died pathetic deaths completely devoid of glory. For all of their magnificent accomplishments, they achieved literally nothing.

Embed from Getty Images
Pyrrhus of Epirus’ death

I’m not here to pass judgment on either of these men. I ache for them. Of course, one of them is a fictional character, but he represents the reality of so many. He lived his whole life in a state of discontentment. Plutarch (via North’s translation) words it:

“But what he won by famous deeds, he lost by vain hopes: desiring so earnestly that which he had not, as he forgot to keep that which he had.” Life of Pyrrhus by Plutarch, tr. by Sir Thomas North

This breaks my heart.

How could these men have lived any other way though? For they did not know the source of contentment. They did not know the Lord. They did not know that if they delighted themselves in the Lord, He would give them the desire of their heart.

Toward the end of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s father shows Nick an old note Gatsby had made for himself. In it we find Gatsby’s ambitious plans for getting ahead. He was determined to live a disciplined life, improve his mind, and race ahead of everybody else. He would be the self-made man. Gatsby’s father looks at his son’s incredible estate and finds comfort in the knowledge that his son had achieved his dreams. He had believed in himself and done exactly what he wanted to do.

But had he gotten what he wanted?

It’s such a complicated question, isn’t it? For first, you have to actually know what it is which will fulfill the deep longing of your heart. You can get it wrong and still get rich, but what does that matter?

As a Christian, it calls me to remember where my contentment is found. Paul said he had learned the secret to contentment… “I can do all things through Christ.”

It may sound similar on the surface, but this is a very different message from, “You can do anything that you wanna’ do.” Believing in yourself will get you nowhere. All you’ll find is your sinful misery. I promise you. Keep looking for the man who found contentment outside of Christ and you won’t find him.

I love how Sinclair Ferguson puts it:

“Contentment is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord at his disposal.”“Learning Contentment” by Sinclair Ferguson

The real hero lays down his life for others. He doesn’t live to make his own name great. He doesn’t live for his own vain wants and desires. He lives to glorify God. And he comes to serve.

And that’s what I’m going to work on remembering when the people around me don’t meet my ridiculous expectations of perfection. When life around me doesn’t live up to my dreams, I’m going to remember my only comfort in life and death:

“That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”1563 Heidelberg Catechism

Don’t live for your dreams. Live for Him.

The Power of Attention

by Lynette

A maiden knight – to me is given
Such hope, I know not fear;
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
That often meet me here.
I muse on joy that will not cease,
Pure spaces clothed in living beams,
Pure lilies of eternal peace,
Whose odours haunt my dreams;
And, stricken by an angel’s hand,
This mortal armour that I wear,
This weight and size, this heart and eyes;
Are touch’d, are turn’d to finest air.
excerpt from “Sir Galahad” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

My first encounter with this poem was uncomfortable, awkward, and humbling, but I will be forever grateful for the experience.

It happened last fall when I had the tremendous privilege of pretending to be a high school student in Nancy Kelly’s classroom. When it came time for poetry, she didn’t pass out copies of the poem for us to read. No, instead she stood in front of the room and read the poem to us. Now, we all knew that when she was done we’d have to tell back what we’d heard. So I started paying close attention…

And then she finished the poem.

What had she said!?

 

I hadn’t a clue. My mind wandered and I was lost.

For most of the narrations we did that morning, this would not have been a big deal. I could have just listened to others narrate and at least caught the gist. But as it turned out, listening to others share the images they saw while listening to the poem was less than helpful.

In fact, it didn’t help me at all when Nancy passed out prints of a painting of the maiden knight in the poem. When our table group gathered to discuss comparisons between the words of the poem and the scene in the painting, I had literally nothing to contribute. Nothing. That was humbling.

But when I went home that week and asked my children to narrate, I had nothing but grace to give when my son answered, “I don’t know.” I get it, buddy. I get it.

I didn’t read it again for him though. The experience of missing out is valuable. You better believe I didn’t miss another word Nancy Kelly said that whole morning. Learning to pay attention is the first step to having any chance at getting an education.

Or as Charlotte Mason said it:

“The highest intellectual gifts depend for their value upon the measure in which their owner has cultivated the habit of attention. To explain why this habit is of such supreme importance, we must consider the operation of one or two of the laws of thought. But just recall, in the meantime, the fixity of attention with which the trained professional man – the lawyer, the doctor, the man of letters – listens to a roundabout story, throws out the padding, seizes the facts, sees the bearing of every circumstance, and puts the case with new clearness and method; and contrast this with the wandering eye and random replies of the uneducated; – and you see that to differentiate people according to their power of attention is to employ a legitimate test. Charlotte Mason (Vol. 1, p. 137)

Thankfully, I did get a second chance with this poem. I’m so glad Nancy Kelly sent a copy home with us. Read my previous post to hear about that.

How Much Do You Care?

by Hannah

Arches and Capitals by John Ruskin, 1849-1852Arches and Capitals by John Ruskin, 1849-1852
Arches and Capitals by John Ruskin, 1849-1852

When I endeavored two years ago to begin my journey of giving my children a classical Charlotte Mason education, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. Being a second generation homeschooler, my heart resonated with the ideas of a living education and of building relationships with God and the things He has created. But then I started reading more deeply and realized that there was a whole world of Great Ideas begging me to enter in, even if just to scratch the surface. It amazes me, the things that open up for a mother who seeks to educate her children at home.

 As inevitably happens, the more I sought to read and grow, the more I realized my lack of understanding. But instead of accepting my weakness and continuing on, I began to disqualify myself from the conversation. I believed that I didn’t deserve a place at the table. What did I have to offer, anyway? What could I possibly have to say that hasn’t already been said? In this social media age, with everyone’s lives on display and everyone wanting their voices to be heard, how could I begin to compete with the noise? What difference did it make?

These kinds of questions kept floating around in my head. So I allowed myself to pull back and give up trying to understand. But God, in His goodness, compelled me to keep reading. And I found answers to my questions in a somewhat unlikely place. 

If you desire to draw, that you may represent something that you care for, you will advance swiftly and safely. If you desire to draw, that you may make a beautiful drawing, you will never make one.
John Ruskin, The Laws of Fesole

There it was – the answer to my questions. Mr. Ruskin’s words are for instruction in art, but he was really speaking to me about my whole life. 

My life is not meant to be a beautiful drawing. If I approach the Great Conversation with the intention to comprehend something lofty or to contribute something of value, I will never get there. I will never gain the understanding I desire. But if my purpose for engaging with the Great Ideas about what it means to be a human made in the image of God, is to come to a greater understanding of and love for my Creator, I will have everything I need to have meaningful participation in that conversation. 

I had already read it in the words of Charlotte Mason: 

“The question is not, — how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education — but how much does he care?”Charlotte Mason

This is true not just for my students, but for myself as well. I am in danger of allowing my pride to stand in the way of my affection for my Creator. If I want to accurately represent His glory with my life I must learn to care deeply for the right things.