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What can I write in 10 minutes?

I have 2 minutes to drink my coffee before it is 30 minutes before Mass. Slurrrp.

The last time I stopped in before Mass the guy behind the counter said, "Free refills!"

I said, "No thanks, I barely have time for one."

"Give it to you in a to-go cup," he suggested. I just said no thanks. Probably someone who was a little more awake would have used it as an opportunity to give a reason for her hope, so to speak. I hadn't had the coffee yet. It isn't in my skill set anyway. Settled for a smile.

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I am the only morning person in my family, except maybe for the 11-yo, and one of the sacrifices I make week after week is pretending to go along with the idea that the eleven o'clock Mass is just as good as the nine o'clock Mass, or the eight o'clock or seven o'clock that we could all be going to if we went to different parishes where there are more morning people.

Today I had a bunch of stuff to do in the afternoon, like make 24 portions of chicken salad for the homeschooler's picnic, and we have been spending church apart for the last couple of months anyway, taking turns hiding in the basement with an extremely cheerful but loud toddler. I announced that I was going to an early Mass and my husband was going to take the children (minus the toddler) to the regular one. And what do you know, I was up early enough to grab a coffee first.

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Yesterday I posted a mild comment on FB about not being humble or kind enough to submit to playing nice with baristas at Starbucks who are required to ask me if I want "tall, grande, or venti?" I always say, "Twelve ounces." The result was that I was gently mocked on FB for wanting to go to Starbucks at all, cf. crap coffee and unethical business practices.

I am in my neighborhood local independent coffee shop this morning. The dark roast is, I believe, decent, although it is a bit more high in acidity than I prefer. The environment is nice and there is reliable wifi. You know, I have no idea what the owner's personal ethics or business ethics are like. I suppose I could go up and ask him to fill out a questionnaire before I deign to buy coffee from him. I understand that in some circles it is popular to punish business owners and companies medium to large for their politics, unrelated to the stuff they sell. Suit yourself, but I can't really get behind that attitude.

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17 minutes to go. It is a short drive to the parish I am going to Mass at. Time to get going.

 

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First week back.

A partial week, anyway, and only a partial schedule. Many years have taught me that it doesn't pay to go from zero to one hundred percent overnight. I won't start up with my co-schooling partner till September 14th, so till then we'll work three days a week; and this week, we are only covering some of our subjects.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we began by practicing waking up on time. Everyone out of bed by eight-thirty. That was hard for some of us.

And then, eating breakfast. New thing we are trying this year: My daughter-who-can't-face-food-till-later officially has permission to skip regular breakfast and get herself a snacky breakfast later in the morning. She has a limited set of things to choose from, though, because if you're going to choose to eat in the middle of the morning, I want you to do it quickly and get it cleaned up. She can have Uncrustables, cold cereal, a packet of instant oatmeal, yogurt, or one of her best-beloved snacks, a mini-can of tuna. So far, so good.

The first school-thing I do in the morning is set up checklists for the 9yo and the 11yo. On the first day they only had a couple of things: take a math test to see how much they needed to review, read for 25 minutes (9yo: Witch of Blackbird Pond; 11yo: Lord of the Flies -- hey, he liked Hunger Games, so why not?), and meet me for 30 minutes to discuss the Acts of the Apostles, which we're going to study together this year. Today was similar, except for math review instead of a test, and no Bible study. Instead I gave them each an "extra" -- the 9yo was to spend time playing the recorder, the 11yo to spend time working through a drawing lesson from a book.

My high school sophomore sat down with me to work on precalculus. I won't be able to do a full lecture for him this hear, but I can spend ten minutes or so previewing each of the upcoming lessons. We are using an older Dolciani book, Introductory Analysis, which starts out pretty straightforwardly with set theory and logic. It's the perfect sort of book for us because it has all the odd-numbered answers in the back, meaning I can assign the odd problems and he can check them himself, and then I can use the even problems to see how he is doing. Four lessons per week.

This year, I have finally been pushed by time constraints to a set weekly lunch menu. Tuesday will be pizza and fruit. Wednesday will be bagels and cream cheese with cucumber slices. Friday will be either quesadillas, or (if I happen to have leftover pasta) macaroni and cheese. I will continue to rotate through this until the kids stage a hunger strike.

(Monday and Thursday are co-schooling days, so that menu is a little more variable. H often makes salmon cake, and I often make spaghetti and meatballs, so let's just say that'll be the default menu.)

The most fun part of my week was working with my brand-new kindergartener, who is excited to have his own school desk right next to my easy chair.

 

I didn't make him get out of his pajamas, which suited him just fine. Whereas all the other kids are ramping up slowly, I started right away with the full schedule for this 5yo.

It feels marvelous to him. He has never had so much one-on-one time with me. Ninety minutes every day! A math lesson with a real worksheet! (He took it so seriously, and colored his squares so carefully, telling me all the while how he was working very hard to color very neatly.) A pre-writing exercise with a dry erase marker! Practice reading words! And -- this never happens -- half an hour to cuddle in my lap and listen to stories.

We shall see how long the novelty lasts... but for now, it feels good to work with him.

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Tonight: date night at the cheap family restaurant around the corner, thanks to a gift certificate from a friend!

 

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Changing room.

After a few weeks of working on it, I decided that our 19-month-old was toilet-trained enough to be sure we weren't turning back.  

So I pulled all his clothes off the changing table shelves in the laundry room, carried them downstairs, and hung them in the first-floor closet.  

I asked Mark and my 15-year-old to carry the changing table downstairs to store it in the basement, and when that was done they carried up an old kitchen cabinet and put it in the place of the changing table.  It took some cleaning up and a cloth to hide the wood-glue stains on the laminate, but now it's another clothes-folding surface, and a place to stow the trash receptacle and some baskets for sorting outgrown clothes and lone socks.

Today I gathered up all the cloth-diaper covers and put them in a tub and snapped on the lid, and carried it to the basement, where I left it on the changing-table shelf.  In another tub, I packed up all the infant cloth diapers, and in yet another, threw some more baby items (bibs, the bag of jumbled pieces of the manual breastpump, receiving blankets).  Down they went.

 While I was at it, I carried down the infant car seat and stowed it next to the changing table.  Then I boxed up some infant clothes in good condition, clothes that had been lying around waiting for me to do something with them.

I hesitated with the box.  Take it out to the car, to deliver it to charity?  Or set it aside to be stowed in the deep recesses of the attic?

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It's a matter of probability, I tell myself, not so much a matter of plans.

Very soon I will be forty-one years old.  I have three to seven years left, perhaps, in which Mark and I might decide to try for another baby, or in which we might find ourselves surprised by one.   I've not had a surprise yet, not in seventeen years of NFP, so I count that probability low; and I don't expect that we will try for another baby, certainly not the way I expected it when we had one, two, three children.  I didn't exactly expect it when we had four; I hoped, though.  

I'm not sure if I hope or not now.  Five is lovely, and my most recent pregnancy was hard.  

And we talk about the future differently these days.  "Three years from now," we say, "four years from now, perhaps we can do such-and such," and we've mostly stopped adding "if we don't have another baby."

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"We can get rid of these things," Mark pointed out, "because if it turns out that we need them again, we can afford to buy new ones."

Yes.  I've already gotten rid of a number of things.  And on the other hand, I saved all the maternity clothes that I really liked, on the grounds that if I needed them again it would be sad not to have the good ones.  Those clothes take up  just a box or two.  And it's really only for a few years.  When I'm forty-eight I will have no reason not to toss the sealed box in the car and tote it down to the crisis pregnancy center or the charity thrift store.  It's not like I risk keeping it around for the next twenty years because I won't know if I need it or not.

And the same for the changing table, right?  And the diaper covers?  And the last box of baby clothes?  It's just a few more years that they might come in handy.   And then I can get rid of them.

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 Probability:

"By age 40, a woman's chance is less than 5% per cycle, so fewer than 5 out of every 100 women are expected to be successful each month. Women do not remain fertile until menopause. The average age for menopause is 51, but most women become unable to have a successful pregnancy sometime in their mid-40s."

It's nothing you would want to count on if you were intent on avoiding pregnancy for some terribly serious reason.  And I have plenty of friends who had babies in their early-to-mid-forties.  

Still, I also have plenty who didn't.

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Then there's this:  If I lived as long as my own mother lived, I would not see my youngest, now a toddler, finish high school.   If I had another baby, and lived as long as my own mother lived, I wouldn't see that new one start high school.

I can't help but be troubled by this one.

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Packing all the baby stuff up felt awfully final, and not in a good way, even though I'm not actually getting rid of it yet.  Somehow I'm reluctant to say, "Probably we won't have another," even if that is, literally, true.   Which leaves me reluctant to do the things that one does when probably one (two, really) won't have another, like give away the favorite baby clothes and the good maternity jeans.

I'm not sure whether the reluctance is based on a desire to mother a baby again; or on the very practical consideration that (probably) to do so would never be regretted while to choose not to do so might well be regretted, or being slow to accept this first limitation brought on by age and age alone; or simply the bitterness that always accompanies the closing of a door to the past.

 I remember feeling something like this when I was finishing college, getting ready to move on to new things, and some small part of me wanting to stay, knowing to do so wasn't possible.

In other words, I don't know what I'm trying to hold onto here.  Is it a gift of life I desire to give?  Or is it clinging to a notion of myself as a life-giver?

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It's a frightening freedom we enjoy.  I am healthy, Mark is healthy; we could go for it again, play the fearful and wonderful game.  We are completely aware that we could.  If we were sure we desired it, or sure we were called to it, we could rise to the challenge.

At the same time, not being called in particular, without a particular desire (only this empty feeling at the boxing up), we are also aware that we can go on as we are, shouldering our bags and hiking off into the sunset with these five.

Love is not a zero-sum game, but energy can be; and I sense a need to direct greater energy to my older children than I have had since the youngest first fluttered to life.  My last pregnancy was hard:  not dangerous to my life and health, just hard, as pregnancy often is.  Mothering this youngest one from babyhood into toddlerhood was beautiful, and I feel at the top of my powers; but all along I felt a pull towards those older children that went unsatisfied, and heard my voice saying "no" what felt like far too much.  "No, we can't do that because of the baby."  "No, I need you to do this instead because of the baby."

I had to push them all away, just a bit.  My arms were full, my energy went to produce milk, the hours of the day slipped by.  I'm not saying it was the wrong thing to do; they learned to sweep the floor and cook dinner and clean their rooms, they learned to take the bus.  They learned that I wouldn't always be there for them.  Which is true.  I won't.

But I'm not saying I liked that part of it.  And looking at my five beautiful children, one of whom I have to look up to now, I wonder if there really is enough of me to go around.   I think there is, barely, now.  But I know what it would take to push that over the edge.  Not that I'd do a bad job.  I would keep it together.  I always do.  

But I do want my kids to remember a mother who had time for each of them.  And -- looking back on the last two years -- I have not.

 It was for a good cause.  A great cause!   The youngest will be there for them far longer than I will.   I'm not sorry.  

But ... which to choose in the future?  Let's just say it is not obvious.

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"Three years from now," we say.  "Four years from now."  We think of places we'll go, things to show each other, things to experience with the growing children.  We have a vision of a new phase of our lives, the phase with no little children in it, the phase where even our youngest walks on his own two feet.

None of it is a guarantee.  None of it is ever a guarantee.  

I've never put the changing table away before.  I guess that is different.  I guess this is the first bifurcation between what might be and what else might be.  It feels important.  

And at the same time it's just housecleaning.

The next step of Kondo... where to start in the "household equipment" category?

More on Marie Kondo's book can be found here, here, and here.

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I'm now partway through decluttering the most baffling meta-category, what Marie Kondo (in her Life-Changng Magic of Tidying Up) calls komono.  I've already done several of the categories within it -- the ones that were easiest to select items that belonged within them -- and am about to embark on the more difficult ones.

Many items within the home... are placed, stored, and accumulate "just because," without our giving them much thought.  I call this category komono, a Japanese term that the dictionary defines variously as "small articles; miscellaneous items; accessories; gadget or small tools, parts, or attachments; an insignificant person; small fry."  It's no wonder people don't know what to do with things that fall into such a vague and all-encompassing category.  Still, it's time to bid farewell to this "just because" approach.  These items play an important part in supporting your lifestyle and therefore they, too, deserve to be handled one by one and sorted properly.

Unlike clothes or books, this category includes a diverse range of items, and the thought of trying to sort and organize them may seem daunting.  If you deal with them in the proper order, however, this task is actually quite simple.  The basic order for sorting komono is as follows:

1. CDs, DVDs ------ Done
2. Skin care products ------------ Done
3. Makeup -------------- Done
4. Accessories -------------- Done
5. Valuables (passports, credit cards, etc.) -------- Skipped; already well organized
6. Electrical equipment and appliances (digital cameras, electric cords, anything that seems vaguely "electric") ------------- Done
7. Household equipment (stationery and writing materials, sewing kits, etc.)
8. Household supplies (expendables like medicine, detergents, tissues, etc.)
9. Kitchen goods/food supplies (spatulas, pots, blenders, etc.)
10. Other (spare change, figurines, etc.)

If you have many items related to a particular interest or hobby, such as ski equipment or tea ceremony articles, treat these as a single subcategory.)   ------ I just did one of these, because I decluttered all the school supplies.

00So, I'm up to #7, "Household equipment."

I had to stop for a while and think:  What exactly does this encompass?  When I have collected all my "household equipment" together, what items will be in the pile?  In what way should they be similar to stationery and sewing kits, but not to medicine, spatulas, or figurines?

By looking at the rest of the list, I could deduce a few things.

o   "Household equipment" doesn't include JUNK.  ("These items play an important role in supporting your lifestyle.")  Or at least, it's time to get rid of the junk that may be hiding among the equipment.

o  "Household equipment" includes some kinds of tools, but not ALL tools.  The sewing kit is given as an example -- and a sewing kit includes scissors, seam rippers, needles.  Writing supplies are an example -- and that means things like pens.  But kitchen tools are excluded, as well as anything that's part of a large hobby-related collection.  (Presumably if your hobby is sewing, most sewing items  go outside "household equipment" and in with the hobby items -- I think she's thinking of a small mending kit that's employed as needed for maintenance tasks, like replacing buttons, repairing seams, and adjusting hems.)

o   "Household equipment" excludes most consumable items, but not all.  Food, detergent, medicine, tissues -- all things that get "used up" -- belong to other subcategories.   But "stationery" is also something that's used up, and it is included, along with the thread that is presumably part of a sewing kit.

o    "Household equipment" excludes items already sorted:  the other types of komono as well as clothes, books, and papers.  It also excludes sentimental items.

What I'm seeing so far is that "household equipment" means durable tools, kits, and other things that are useful.  Consumable goods are part of this only insofar as they are part of a kit or set, like the  thread in the sewing kit.   Kitchen items are not included, I presume because kitchen items are a big enough category on their own in any household; whereas in smaller households, "household equipment" might be a small enough category the deal with all at once.

So:  useful items for household tasks, but not kitchen items, not sentimental items, not related to a specific hobby, and generally not consumables.   I went through my house with a clipboard and pen and wrote down the kinds of items that I thought fell into this category, to see if I should do it all at once or if there are some subcategories to break it into.  Here's what I came up with:

    Baby care items.  Cloth diapering paraphernalia, child carriers, portable changing pads.

    Clothing care.  Laundry baskets, hangers, lingerie bags, eyeglass and jewelry repair kits, mending kit. 

    Cleaning tools.  Brooms, mops, totes, scrub brushes, rags, dishpans.

    Linens.  Bedding, towels, napkins, tablecloths.

    Quasi-furniture.  Folding chairs, stepstools, little-kid workbenches, rolling carts.

    Travel items.  Suitcases, backpacks, toiletry kits, picnic coolers.

    Board games and other gaming paraphernalia.  Cards, chess timers, extra dice.

     "Tool" tools.   Hammers, pliers, screwdrivers, twine, etc.

    Containers and organizers.  Boxes, bins, racks, bookends, baskets.    

  

Excluded from all that:  homeschooling paraphernalia, camping gear, athletic gear, fishing gear.  

In our household, most of the "tool" tools are also excluded from my responsibility, as they're stored out of sight in Mark's shop and he knows better than I do what is extraneous and what is necessary.  I can find most anything I need in there, if I look long enough.  But you will find others here and there throughout the house -- needle-nose pliers in a kitchen drawer, wire cutters in my guitar case and in the school science box, a small screwdriver that lives on my dresser, a couple of pocketknives and a set of Allen wrenches -- things I've squirreled away so that I won't have to hunt for them in Mark's shop should I need them.

What order should they be attacked in?  Marie Kondo:

[I]t is easier if you start with more personal items and clearly defined content first.

The "personal items" won't help me organize them since by now we've gotten to things that belong to "the household" rather than to any one person, although in my role as homemaker some of them (clothing care items) fall more under my domain than others (board game paraphernalia).

 So (prior to publishing the post here) I roughly sorted them from "mostly my domain" to "mostly someone else's domain."  And then I stuck "containers and organizers" at the end, because it strikes me as ridiculous to get rid of any of those until you've finished organizing everything.  I think those come right before sentimental items.

So... I guess that's what I attack next.  Baby care items.  It's about time to get rid of some of those anyway, I think.

Meditation on French saints. A few passages from d'Elbée.

A week or two ago I posted briefly about I Believe in Love, originally published in 1969 as Croire à l'Amour (that is, To believe in love). It was gifted to me in a spiritual direction session that I'd sought out for some very specific advice, and the priest handed it to me almost apologetically explaining for the cover design, with its prominent headshot of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in her habit. "This isn't one of those sentimental books about St. Thérèse," he said, and I had to give him points for having pegged me pretty well.

(I can appreciate kitsch as well as the next person, but the porcelain-and-roses holy-card drawings of Thérèse, um, actually offend me. The embalmer has done his work so thoroughly that the beloved is not visible.)

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Anyway, d'Elbée turned not to be writing about St. Thérèse very much at all. The book is subtitled (in the English editions at least) A personal retreat based on the teaching of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and indeed, in the first "conference" (as the chapters are called), d'Elbée announces, "During this retreat I intend to talk to you about confident love, following the teaching of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, of whom Pope Pius XII said, 'she rediscovered the Gospel itself, the very heart of the Gospel.'"

But the various quotes and examples from the life of that saint are pulled out more as crumbs of inspiration that support the various themes that d'Elbée is writing about. There are many quotes from Scripture -- many more than there are quotes from Thérèse -- and also quotes and anecdotes from many others. St. John Vianney, St. John of the Cross, St, Teresa of Avila, St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, but also lesser-known figures, principally French ones: St. Claude de la Colombière, ordinary journalists and authors. I get the impression that d'Elbée assumes his reader, his retreatant, already knows St. Thérèse very well -- the unsentimental, audacious, mischievous, wildly courageous St. Thérèse -- and points out her features to one who already recognizes them in context.

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I don't know why the good theological books that have crossed my path in the last several years have so often been the work of French thinkers and saints, or occasionally of others who were heavily influenced by them. It's a happy coincidence, because that's the one modern language (besides English) that I read really well, and so I have the opportunity of consulting the untranslated originals from time to time. But it's also interesting to me -- why do I so often find that the French-speaking writers (Francis de Sales, Jeanne de Chantal, Thérèse, Elisabeth Leseur, and now d'Elbée have good and sensible answers to my particular problems?

Sometimes I think that particular features of the history of the French-speaking Church must have generated a sort of Christian response that happens to be just the sort to respond to particular features of the history of me. Cathars and Calvinists, Jansenists and Jacobins, [Third-]Republicans.... all a slow forging of a particular kind of blade, one that feels at home in my hand.

But the blade metaphor doesn't really work for me, as nicely as it seems to work in a blog post; the effect of these French saints on me is demulcent, a healing balm, or a cool slaking fountain. The challenges both inside and outside the French Church have been harsh and punishing and unforgiving and frightening ones. The response from the French saints is a response of confidence, good humor, and serenity. "Blessed are the meek" in French comes out as "Heureux les débonnaires," often footnoted "litt., 'ceux qui sont doux'" -- "mild" with all its connotations of calm weather, "good-humored" with all its connotations of an unruffled, un-ruffle-able disposition. It makes me think of the disciples waking Jesus in alarm, only to see him calm the waves with a word.

I am convinced that the French connotation is the correct one, and I believe that the term "meek" has damaged English-speaking Christianity in a way that's going to be difficult to recover from.

Something in my nature -- it precedes my conversion and reaches far back into childhood -- looks critically upon the self and despairs. I am forever working in vain to silence, or at least drown out, an unrelenting, unforgiving, driving, punishing inner voice. The French saints, I think, had to deal with (and continue to deal with) a shape-shifting and ever-constant specter, of which the extant anticlericalism is only the latest outer appearance: the depressing philosophy of total, unredeemable human depravity. The message of confident love, the belief that Jesus' goodness >> any individual's weakness, is the corrective to both. This is what I find in the French saints.

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The whole book is good, but judging by the frequency of my pencil scratches on the pages, the earlier chapters are the ones that I most needed to read at this time. Here is a selection of my marked passages.

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Prior dilexit nos: God loved us first that we might love him. That is the explanation of it all: of the Creation, the Incarnation, Calvary, the Resurrection, the Eucharist.

Corrective: The love we have is evidence that God loves us; but we don't have to love him in order for him to love us. We are loved without any effort on our own and do not have to earn that love before we can access it.

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We do not read the Gospel enough in the light of the love of Christ. Thus, sixteen centuries after the Last Supper and Calvary, the most satanic of all heresies, Jansenism, was able to appear and spread: a heresy which turned a God of love, saying "Come to me, all of you, come because you are unworthy, come because you are sinful, come because you need to be saved," into a God whose arms are raised to strike, a demanding God, a vengeful God. Under the pretext of recognizing our unworthiness, Jansenism diabolically led souls away from Jesus.

Thus, no longer willing to endure this heresy, Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary [Alacoque] at Paray-le-Monial and through her gave His Heart to the world.

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When someone asked little Thérèse to summarize her little childlike way, she answered, "It is to be disturbed by nothing." ... Naturally this means not to be voluntarily disturbed, not consciously or deliberately disturbed, because nature always worries.... The main thing is not to consent consciously to anxiety or a troubled mind.

The moment you realize you are worrying, make very quickly an act of confidence: "No, Jesus, You are there..." Perhaps He is sleeping in the boat, but He is there.... It is really an offense against Him when we worry voluntarily about anything....

I emphasize this concept of "worrying with the full consent of the will," for it is very important in the spiritual life to make a distinction between our nature and our will, united to the love of Jesus. "Homo duplex:" my nature says "No"; my will says "Yes." ...My nature is troubled and afraid; my heart recalls the divine testament: "Peace I leave with you"... My nature revolts; I force myself to say, "All is well, Jesus; do not change anything." It is a fight which we must take up again and again without ceasing, for our fallen nature always rears up its head. St. Francis de Sales says it dies a quarter of an hour after we do! This is the drama of our life. But the beautiful thing is that Jesus sees our will united to his by a fundamental choice -- the profound, habitual disposition of having only one will with Him. All those movements of our nature, if we do not consent to them, do not exist for Him. There is no sin without consent.

This is precisely the passage I needed to see most right now. A handful of events in my life recently have shown me the degree to which I was reared to confuse nature and will, not to believe in the fundamental inner freedom of voluntary choice. I come from the land of "this is the way that you are and always will be: accept it." This is the way it has to be, because the alternative is to live in a land of understanding right and wrong, of calling good good and evil evil, and that is uncomfortable.

But not to see the distinction between nature and will is to sink into one of three terrible errors about the totality of being human, because our nature is truly a mess.

-- Some, falling into the error of total human depravity, preach hopelessness: the best we can do is pretend to be among the elect, only to find out at the very end whether we really are.

-- Or, rejecting that (because who wants to stay totally depraved?) some of us *cough* strive endlessly to redeem our own nature by the powers of that nature, in endless programs of self-improvement and collective social reform. (A little progress appears to be made, as we harvest a little waste heat and turn it into power for good, but it's nothing more than a slight improvement in efficiency; there is a theoretical limit that is inherent to the material system. Thank you, Jules Carnot, for yet another French contribution to my philosophy.)

-- Or, rejecting that too, recognizing correctly that there is something good in all of us, concluding that human nature is usually not depraved at all, is fundamentally good, at least in a wide variety of its forms, and must be affirmed and celebrated everywhere -- except where they infringe upon the inclinations of other natures.

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The saints learned to rejoice in humility and humiliations... I speak here, obviously, of a love that is pure will, for our fallen nature does not seek humiliations or love them.

I wrote in the margins, "We forget again the distinction between nature & will & we often ascribe to the saints a holy Nature instead of a holy will, & then we see our own nature & despair."

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Frequently make what I call the examination of the prayer "O Jesus, I thank you for everything." It should be the fruit of your disposition of will, of heart, and of soul to bless Jesus for everything that He wills or permits for you, for everything that happens to you... In this short and simple prayer there is at the same time humility, an immense confidence in merciful love, abandonment, and thanksgiving.

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There is a repeated theme that Jesus rejoices with us in our wretchedness because it enables him to act in his role as Savior. That we should be thankful even for our misery because it leads us to seek mercy, and that the act of seeking mercy is itself a joy. And to be completely confident in that mercy.

The Curé of Ars: "Our sins, grains of sand beside the great mountain of the mercies of God." St. Thérèse..: "All possible crimes, a drop of water thrown into a blazing furnace."

One reproach sometimes made to this spirituality of confident love is that it would entail the danger of presumption and of letting ourselves go. You shall see... how abandonment and obedience do away with this danger. I think, on the contrary, that there is a double danger in the method which diminishes the role of confidence and stresses the role of personal effort, subjected to numerous self-examinations. If we are successful, there is the danger of pride, of attributing to ourselves what is in reality the work of grace; on the other hand, if we see no signs of progress, nine times out of ten we fall into wretched, sterile discouragement.... But in order to live this sound doctrine to the fullest, we must be very convinced...

[E]ven the most beautiful souls... do not want to believe that confidence is the key which will open the door for him, becau this door is a wound made by love. They look for other ways, as if this way were too beautiful to be reliable.

...So what then? He calls me just as I am? I can go to him with all my miseries, all my weaknesses? He will repair what I have done badly? He will supply for all my indigence?

Yes, provided that you go to Him, that you count on Him, that you expect everything of Him...

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[W]e must live a presently existing love...What would a husband think who, when asking his wife, "Do you love me?" received the response "I have a great desire to love you; I shall work toward it; I hope one day to achieve it by dint of my efforts and generosity and sacrifice." You are right to smile. But is this not the spiritual disposition many excellent souls adopt toward Jesus?

Make rather the admirable response of St. Peter: "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love you."

That gave me a rueful little laugh of recognitin, because that's how I often phrase it when I greet my spouse. Not the first way, but the second. "You know I love you," I will say. There is something a little desperate in that phrasing, I think, because always -- always -- I am tempted to think I do not love enough. I want, I think, to be reassured that, at least, I love enough for it to be known.

One of the great fruits of a good marriage has been the realization, no less astonishing to me for the frequency with which I realize it, of being beloved. I know and see my own faults constantly. And yet, someone (a pretty great person, if I may inject my opinion) loves me, really and for real. I wake up to it every morning and marvel, because it is marvelous, but at the same time I don't doubt it even for a minute. And I try with all my will to apply the same marvel as well as the same confidence to divine love and mercy, unfathomably vaster and more constant.

I have found d'Elbée's meditations to give me a helpful little nudge toward that confidence.

 

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More on adapting Latin curriculum for middle-and-elementary kids.

I started this post yesterday, here.

At the same time that I was starting to approach Latina Christiana I for the second time, with my second group of elementary school kids, I was just getting deep into First Form Latin with the older set.  Having a couple of kids beginning to start a study of Latin grammar that was more rigorous, and finally being able to see the road ahead, helped me work out exactly what fundamentals I wanted to work on in the earlier years.

Namely, I wanted them to be able to recite all the declensions and conjugations by the time they got to them.

I wound up designing a "Latin workbook" of my own for the younger kids, one that contained space to write out the declensions and vocabulary groups in whole. 

The writing is from my daughter when she was age seven, I think.

Eventually I dropped the workbook entirely.  I used the flash cards, and I just trucked on through, reciting mensa, mensae, mensae... and amabam, amabas, amabat...  and eventually res, rei, rei ... and audiebam, audiebas, audiebat...

I did very little writing with them because of the range of writing abilities.  We tended to work orally from a dry-erase board.  I played a lot of Carnifex, eventually getting up to [S-DO-V] sentences that contained adjectives and adverbs (Aquila alta ursam parvam non videbat.)  

This coming year, everyone is finally able to work in a workbook, so I'm putting all four of the middle-size kids -- fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh-graders -- through FFL.  (The youngest two are on the precocious side and have always been quick to translate orally; if they can't write fast enough to keep up with the writing, they can finish the work orally.  I am confident they'll be able to keep up inside their heads.)  But we only meet twice a week, so we'll be going reeeeeeeallly slowly -- a bit less than half time.  

I plan to augment FFL this year with readings about ancient Rome.  This past year the first of my students sat for the National Latin Exam (and did very well!  I feel validated), which was the first time that I got a good idea of what is expected of high school Latin students. I hadn't been teaching much of the "social studies" content.  I think I'm going to try to start bringing that material in earlier:

• History of the Roman empire
• Roman myths (well, we're going to do that with D'Aulaire's Greek Myths and memorize everybody's Roman names, mostly)
• Names of items in a Roman domus
• Maps and the Latin names of significant geographical and political features
• Architecture
• Daily life in Rome and in the outlying provinces

Once you've learned this they aren't likely to forget.

The other thing I'm going to do is continue reciting all the declensions and conjugations that they've already learned, so that they are still there when they finally arrive at them in the junior high and high school years.

   

Latin for middle- and elementary-age kids. How I rocked the cymbam.

I recently got a request to blog about teaching Latin to elementary school students.

First, I went through old blog posts to dig up what I can on the subject of Latin:

•  Latin begins (June 2007)
• Language learning observations (July 2007)
• Co-schooling: Latin (July 2010 -- part of a series I did on co-schooling)
• Attention all Latin-teaching homeschoolers who are barely staying one step ahead (an online resource) (June 2011)

I also embarked on a project to use what we've learned in Latin to experiment with teaching a sort of accelerated, but reading-and-writing focused, Spanish:

• A language-learning idea (October 2011)
• Spanish from Latin, update (November 2011)
• Spanish from Latin - more information (November 2011)
• Searching for words (April 2012)
• So how did that whirlwind overview of Spanish for Latin speakers go? (January 2013)
• Newfangled language-learning (July 2014)

A side note:  Since I tried that, by the way, I've come to believe that it's simply NOT true that the only valid way to teach a living language is with the goal of fluent conversational speech.  I can think of lots of reasons why it's worthwhile to teach a foreign living language with a text, translation, and grammar focus.

(1) There's plenty opportunity to practice what you've learned even if there are not many native speakers or you don't travel, because there is plenty of text-based interaction out there:  literature, news articles, and Internet fora

(2) Some kids enjoy translation and grammar; it's a myth that only being able to speak motivates kids.

(3) It's less important to work directly with a native or fluent speaker, and can thereby be self-taught.

(4) It teaches the standard syntax of the language.

(5) It can lay the groundwork for a conversational course later on.

(6) It's better than not learning at all because you're afraid to try to learn the language on your own.

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But this is a post about teaching elementary- and middle-school-aged kids Latin...

When I was teaching a single, reading child at home, we started with Prima Latina from Memoria Press.  I have relied on Memoria Press from the beginning because they publish materials that are laid out for the teacher who is not herself an expert in Latin.  The teacher can easily learn along with the student, which is exactly what I needed for the first several years that I was facilitating children.

I followed Prima exactly as it was presented in the curriculum.  But then, when we moved on to Latina Christiana and I picked up some other students, I began to run into problems.  

The organization of Latina Christiana I is... kind of spiral? The grammar marches along in a reasonable succession; but the vocabulary is added erratically.  Ten or twelve new words are learned in each lesson along with a new grammar concept.  But the new words are often a mix of parts of speech:  you might learn six nouns, three verbs, and a preposition.  

I think there are probably kids who could handle this with no problem, but it proved to be very difficult for the learners I was working with.  I wound up adapting the program.   As soon as we'd get to the first lesson on, for example, second-declension nouns:

1. I would halt the new grammar lessons -- we'd stop right there at the first lesson on second-declension  nouns.
2. I would go through the rest of the workbook and flashcard pack to find all the second-declension nouns that they would encounter in the rest of the course.
3. I would teach the second-declension vocabulary words all at once.  
4. We would practice -- flash cards, reciting the cases, copywork, games like charades and "carnifex" (hangman), etc. -- until I had maybe 70--75% mastery of the vocabulary.
5. We would go on with the grammar lessons.

I had a hunch that it would be easier to remember which declension a noun belonged to, or which conjugation a verb belonged to, if they were always introduced in like groups.  This turned out to be correct, at least for my particular group of kids.  The method lent itself well to flashcards and games, besides.  Frankly, I liked learning the words this way too.

Later I began to stretch the LCI curriculum even more.  Near the end, LC1 introduces a spate of third-declension nouns -- without teaching the declension or specifying the gender of any of the nouns.  I halted the grammar lesson; then, I looked them all up myself and taught them in three groups, one for masculine, one for feminine, and one for neuter.  I also taught how to decline them.   It took a really, really long time.

(It turned out that I had missed some of the subtleties of the differences between "i-stem" and "non-i-stem" nouns, and a couple of years later I had to un-teach some of my mistakes.  The kids eventually figured it out and it turned out okay anyway.)

Meanwhile, they were all getting dissatisfied with the slow progress of the grammar.  Everything in LC1 is in the nominative case, but they enjoyed making sentences and they wanted direct objects!  So I taught myself how to construct [Subj]-[DO]-[Verb] sentences, and then started making my own translation worksheets.  The queen loves the girl.  The slave carries the table.  The waves frighten the sailors.   

Before long I had almost entirely abandoned the LC1 workbook, at least in the order that the lessons were presented.  I started doing them out of order, in a way that made sense to me.

More later...