An Image For Me To Keep

The pastor stands and reads from Isaiah.

My heart quickens, and familiar words pour 

Off my tongue like a thick, dark wine.

By the Spirit, I see the Lord lay a finger lightly 

On my heart, and I gasp! Acute heat! 

Lovingly, He’s standing, tracing His Words embossed, 

Reading from the scroll of Isaiah on my heart. 

The symbols flame under His touch; They glow!

Fire fills me like an earthen hearth. 

I’m blown to raging with one gentle breath. 

Tears fall freely, seem to sizzle, some 

Fragrant mixture of material,

Some mystical exchange of the elements:

Spirit, fire, flesh, blood, breath, tears, wine. 

All mingle above my head, within my breast, upon my lap.

I know myself then, for He is knowing me.

I see myself then; He is seeing me. 

I am wholly myself, because He’s residing in me

Filling His temple with smoke and glory!

I wonder about the scene I must be making,

But it’s a wonder to me, because no one sees 

This alighting on me, these angels coming and going. 

When the pastor finished the passage, 

There was pressure on my chest. 

I can trace it now, days later: soft, smooth, and cool. 

It was a knuckle sinking keenly into my sternum.

The fire and heat melted my heart like wax, 

And He left His image here for me to keep.

Our Ongoing Dilemma

All ye who don’t want to be followers,

Follow me! 

All ye who lack confidence,

I'm sure! 

All ye who lack knowledge, 

I know! 

All ye who lack community, 

We'll include you! For a fee 

Here’s a list of approved texts.

But mark you! This is not a list like others to be checked. 

Here’s a plan for those who do not plan, 

And we approve your plans to use it.

Here, too, at last! A curriculum to believe!

Made especially for those who don’t believe in curriculum.

Like every new diet that isn’t any old diet

Or news source that claims no particular bias,

We buy that one, too. 

We find ourselves again Following,

Asking, Marking, Checking, Planning, Buying,

Seeking entry into yet another Inner Ring,

Looking for that peace, approval, fellowship only God can bring. 

Wisdom still cries out in the streets.

She has known all along what we need:

The instruction she alone is qualified to give,

The water only she alone is freely offering. 

 

Another Visit to The Met

Norah had to work on Friday. She's earning money for college. Then she needed to use her time on Saturday- Monday to finish her regular Challenge 4 work and her Senior Thesis, so she told us to go ahead to The Met without her, but to take lots of pictures.  It was a moment of maturity. Her dad and I see those more and more lately. 

On the way there, we sang the Classical Conversations timeline song a few times. Adele is still practicing for Memory Masters, so it was a good use of the time in the car. And fun! Avril is in Challenge A now, but she grew up singing the song and still remembers the timeline and enjoys singing it with her little sister. This song is really just a part of our family culture now, and gets referred to often by everyone, even Dad, as we are discussing anything and everything. 

Having been to The Met before, we knew we'd see a bunch of things directly related to our CC timeline, our other memory work, our read alouds, or our homeschool in general... so we decided to keep our eyes open for all those things that sparked relations.  

"Cherokee trail of tears is on the timeline, Mom!" -Adele 

This is End of the Trail by Fraser.

We do a lot of reading aloud, and a lot of snuggling while we read, so these images were some of my favorites of the day. This is called Story of Golden Locks by Seymour Joseph Guy. 

Jungle Tales by Shannon

A Young Mother by Vonnoh

This was one of the most interesting pieces to us this time. It's a statue of Cupid by MacMonnies. We stood and studied it for several minutes. It's made of several different materials: bronze, wood, ivory, lapis, bloodstone, enamel, gold... All the textures and colors were a dance and delight for the eyes. Lapis is my favorite stone. 

We memorize the Christmas story from Luke every December as part of Advent. "Joseph took the child and his mother to Egypt to escape King Herod..." Images like this make the words stored in our hearts come to life. This is Flight Into Egypt by Tanner. 

This one just reminded me of the sun coming up through the trees in our woods right now, a sight I see almost everyday as I sip my coffee. It's called Dawn-Early Spring and it's by Tryon. 

The girls have memorized poems by Robert Lewis Stevenson, shown in this relief by Augustus-Saint Gauden.

John Singer Sergeant is one of the artists studied in CC with the modern history cycle. The girls recognized "Portrait of Madame X" right away. 

This is a statue Nydia, a blind flower girl from Pompeii, by Rogers. Adele actually wrote more than one paper about Pompeii this year in Essentials, since that story is part of CC's Ancient History cycle. 

Adele's memorizing Latin noun endings, but Avril is actually doing her first year of Latin with Henle in Challenge A, so she knew how to read simple words and phrases in the museum. That was pretty exciting. 

"Thou shalt... have no others gods... not make unto the any graven image..." The Ten Commandments are in our Ancient History memory work this year. 

Egypt, Nile River, Nile River Delta... several locations in geography memory work are related to Egypt and the Mediterranean this year since there's a focus on Ancient History. This also brings to life some of the Old Testament stories we know and love. 

Adele just wrote her Faces of History paper/ did her presentation on Persephone. She kept seeing Persephone everywhere! 

The girls love the myths and read them constantly, so it was fun to find or recognize the characters in the art and know their stories. Above is an image of a maenad dancing for the god Dionysis, who recently showed up in our read aloud: Prince Caspian, and Narcissus seeing his reflection.  

Hercules' knot

There's a history sentence about "The seven wonders of the ancient world..." and the "Temple of Artemis at Ephesus" is one of them. 

"...Persia fall to Alexander the Great!" is an item on the timeline. 

Graduation Preparation

We are preparing for Challenge 4's graduation. 

Thankfully, another mom of a young man in my class has already done this before, graduating an older son out of Challenge 4 a few years ago. 

The ceremony is in May, so I sat down and ordered Norah's graduation invitations and thank you cards from Shutterfly. 

I ordered caps, gowns, and tassels for her class from graduationoutlet.com using some of our supply fees. (The moms gave me appropriate sizes for their kids.)

Finally, I ordered Norah's diploma from homeschooldiploma.com (Each mom is ordering her child's diploma separately, so they can be personalized.)

When asked if I wanted to include a quote or school motto on the diploma, I knew just what I wanted/ what it had to be. 

This Matthew Arnold quote started out as a joke/ exhortation. 

I printed it, framed it, and quietly placed it on Norah's desk back in the early years of Challenge when she was complaining about the rigors, especially the Latin. 

“For rigorous teachers seized my youth, 
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, 
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, 
There bade me gaze, and there aspire. 
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom: 
What dost thou in this living tomb?”

Since then, all or part of this quote has been quoted time and time again in various contexts, mostly when there's a lot to do.

This quote has become a part of our family culture. 

Also since then, Norah has learned Latin so well that she is translating from Virgil, has started creating her own language, and can't wait to study Greek in college. 

She has also apologized for all the complaints she made back then and said, "Thanks" because of the delight that is hers because of Latin. 

So I was just sobbing when I added this to Norah's dipolma. 

The littles heard me crying, ran in, called Norah down, and Norah hugged me from behind and kissed my head as I showed her the diploma. 

I will cherish these bittersweet memories. 

I'm certain where she is going next is God's perfect will for her, so that is a big comfort and inspiration as I am dealing with a lot of sadness that Norah's childhood time at home is almost over. 

Malcolm Guite

 We stayed up to watch Malcolm Guite speak at Wheaton the other night. 

The girls affectionately call him "Our guy." 

They first saw him on Hutchmoot Homebound and when he made the girls giggle as he bit into an English muffin covered in jam, let crumbs fall on his vest, slurped his tea, then read a humorous, yet deeply spiritual poem, the girls were just goners. 

Now we are all fans and will listen to him as often as we can, anywhere we find him speaking online. 

We are reading his poem "O Sapientia" at the start of our Lenten readings each night we do them so as to memorize the poem by Easter. 

He is a blessing and a delight. Find him somewhere online and listen for yourself. 

Note: The doodle of Malcolm Guite was done by my nine year old while listening to his lecture. 

Processing Beeswax

Our bees died over winter, so we are processing the beeswax to put it to use. 

We did not save any honey this time, just wax. There wasn't much capped honey left anyway, so it seemed like a lot of work for very little result. 

Also, the capped honey that was there was covered in light layer of whitish-grey-green mold, and there was definite evidence that the uncapped honey underneath the capped honey was fermenting. (There were bubbles in the uncapped honey and it had a subtle, but rank smell.) 

I did not see how to get the capped honey out without #1 mixing it with the mold and/or #2 mixing it with the uncapped, fermenting honey. 

For those reasons, I didn't want to take the trouble to save the little honey left and/ or risk eating contaminated honey. 

Note: When I'm more experienced in beekeeping, I know I may learn more and find that I could have processed the honey and eaten it without risk, but I don't feel confident that I can do that at this point in my experience.

We aren't saving the wax on the old frames for the new bees, either, because I am using a different hive design in future. Right now, I use a Layens hive. In future, I am going to try a traditional Langstroth. 

So there is no way of reusing the frames. 

But I can and will use the processed, cleaned-up wax to melt and paint onto the new frames in order to help the new bees draw those frames with new wax. 

And/ or I can make homemade beeswax candles for gifts like I did last year. 

Outside, near the waterhose and over peagravel where it is proper to make a mess and easy to clean up, I pulled all the honey and wax off the twelve, large Layers frames and into this large, old Tupperware. Then I carefully, carefully brought the Tupperware into my spare bathroom shower. I added water from the shower, and I am soaking the wax in batches of water to clean it. Every day (or every other day), I carefully, carefully drain the dirty water through a fine, metal, mesh strainer and add new water, not allowing any wax out of the strainer/ into the shower. Even a small amount of wax could melt and coat/ clog the pipes. 

I have a smaller, white bucket on the kitchen counter where I am also soaking a smaller portion of the wax, and this is the bucket I work from. If this smaller bucket gets empty, I go to the larger Tupperware for more wax, etc. 

I get out a large-mouth, plastic cup and line it with a white trouser sock, then I stuff the sock with wax, carefully, not getting wax on the counter. If I do get wax on the counter, I clean it with Chlorox wipes and elbow grease. I am careful to move this bucket into the sink and wash wax off my hands off over this bucket with running water only, so no wax goes down the sink either. 

I tie a knot in the sock and put it in a crock pot specifically set aside for this purpose. Note: You can't cook in a crock pot once you've used it to process wax. So get a small crock pot from the thrift store for this purpose. I add water to the bottom, turn on the heat, and put the lid on. 

Make sure part of the sock sticks out the top of the crock pot so you have something to hold onto and the whole sock doesn't get totally hot and waxy.

After an hour or two on high or a few hours on low, check the sock to see if the wax is melting. 

Use a plastic spoon dedicated to the purpose to push the sock against the inside of the crock pot and carefully, carefully push the wax out of the sock and let it drain down into the hot water. 

The dirt and large particles will either remain in the sock if it's thick enough OR the junk will go into the water with the hot wax. 

DO NOT POUR THE WATER AND WAX DOWN THE SINK at this point. 

Throw out the hot, waxy sock with the dirt and junk inside, but let the crock pot cool off with the dirty water and melted wax inside. 

Once it cools, the dirty water remains on the bottom; the wax forms a nice circle on the top. 

Remove the circle of wax and set it aside, THEN you can pour out that dirty water. It may still be best to pour it outside. 

I save the rounds of wax in a large zip lock once they are dry, and then melt them to use them in candles, which another step-by-step process entirely. 

Challenge 4

We're in the final weeks of this year of Classical Conversations. I direct the Challenge 4 class this year, which my oldest daughter attends. Right now, we're reading Virgil in the original Latin for Latin class and again in English for Ancient Literature, we're reading and discussing 1 Samuel for devotions and Mere Christianity for Theology, The Discoverers for Ancient History, and we're discussing concepts and demonstrating problems in Saxon Physics and Advanced and Practical Maths each week. Each student is also writing their Senior Thesis that is actually due next week, so they are reading portions in class, so I can give each them feedback and they can help each other form their thoughts. The seniors will present their ideas to a panel of judges soon, who will have read papers and formulated questions ahead of time. Students will have to speak up and defend their logic and arguments aloud in public under some friendly, gentle, yet authentic scrutiny. I cherish these days. It's a rich conversation each week, and we discover so many relationships between one subject and another. Being a Challenge tutor is an awesome privilege. It's like being a youth group or small Bible study leader, only I get to study all the subjects with my students at once. After all, God's work and His glory aren't limited to Theology, and none of the subjects exist without all the others.