Hidden Art, Chapter 1

Hidden Art of Homemaking Book Club, Chapter 1: The First Artist

I am joining the Book Club hosted by Cindy at Ordo Amoris, reading through Edith Schaeffer's The Hidden Art of Homemaking. I first read this book several years ago, and honestly have lost a lot of what it said to me at the time. Somewhere between the excitement of having my own home and becoming a homeschooling mother of three, the "art" went a little bit out the window and utility won the day. When I had three babies under the age of two, "survival" was more like it.

Most of the beauty I enjoy these days is outside, or comes in from outside, which is fitting as Chapter 1 of the book is about God as the first Artist. The Creation is truly the first and best art.  Made in the image of our Creator, we also have the capacity to create art in many forms. We are limited by time and talent, but "nevertheless we have been created in His image, so we can be, and are made to be, creative." (p. 25) As Mrs. Schaeffer writes, God was the first sculptor, musician, painter, and gardener; forming the mountains and the human body, composing the songs of the birds, arranging the lights in the heavens, and sending the breeze to make the trees and the seas dance. He was the first author--speaking ideas into words that burst into life and began the story--and now we have our own stories to tell.

Certainly not everything we create is art, but I believe that as we are cast in our Creator's image, that which is art is also cast in the image of its original.  Are not all forms of art found in creation somewhere? A friend recently posted a picture on Facebook of the view from the Willis Tower in Chicago with the caption, "The Midwest is pretty flat." One commenter responded, "We build our mountains out of steel."

Most days, if the house is reasonably clean, that is good enough. At times I get inspired to do a little more--rearrange furniture, maybe put a few flowers on the table, dust the baseboards. But when the lessons are finished and meals are taken care of, I tend to think of myself as "off duty," and I am ready to sit down somewhere and read, regardless of whether or not I have done my work with the mind of an artist or just taken care of the bare necessities. I am hoping however, that as I work through this book again, I will renew my desire to create beauty in my home, through the "hidden art" of homemaking.

We are sharing pictures of the view in our backyards this week, so here are a few shots of ours.

On a clearer day, you can see the mountains through the trees.

Personalities and Pools

"A person is a person, no matter how small." 

--Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who

Of all things, the quote above is what I think of when I read Charlotte Mason's first principle of education, "Children are born persons." In moments when I catch myself falling into the "egoism which persuades us that in proportion to a child's dependence is our superiority, that all we do for him is our grace and favour, and that we have a right, whether as parents or teachers, to do what we will with our own," (Vol. 6, p. 80) I chant it to myself.

My children are not automatons. They are persons, with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams that I need not make light of just because they are young. They have interests different than my own which should be respected, but sometimes I forget this. I half-listen, nod and smile, and have no idea what they are talking about when they mention it later. This is not kind, and it does not respect them as persons.

 I have a child who is very mechanically inclined, and from a young age he has taken great interest in swimming pools and their pumps. He has taught himself a lot about how they work and how to assemble them and the things they require. Last summer he took care of one of those easy set-up pools in our backyard very competently, without much help from us. It is truly one of his passions.

Yesterday he decided to spend some of his saved money on a much larger pool on Craigslist. He really, really wanted to set it up today, even though he would not be allowed to fill it with water yet. When he mentioned this last night, my response was to tell him to go ahead, but that I didn't want to have to help him set it up because I had things I needed to do today, and that I basically thought it was a bad idea. My husband had to work, so any parental involvement was going to be on my shoulders. It's March. It's cold. It's even been snowing a bit. And I really wanted to spend today planning out meals and lessons and other things for the week. Inside.  He said he would be able to do it alone, but truly, there was no way. My husband looked at me and said he wished I could get excited about it because our son was so excited about it. He was right, and I knew it.

Later that night, I was reading Chapter 5 of A Philosophy of Education, "The Sacredness of Personality." And I read this:

"All action comes out of the ideas we hold and if we ponder duly upon personality we shall come to perceive that we cannot commit a greater offense than to maim or crush, or subvert any part of a person." (p. 80)

Today, I stood in the windy cold with my son and one of my daughters setting up the pool. He was happy for the help and it was good. There were moments of frustration, but we worked together and the job got done. My menu isn't planned and we'll be winging it some tomorrow, but it will be okay.  This was better. I wish I had responded with love and respect for who God created my child to be last night instead of thinking only of myself and what was important to me.  But I am hopeful that today made up for some of it, and that going forward I will see the person standing in front of me, no matter how small.

The Nature of Reality

I had the rare occasion to drive somewhere alone last week, and I took advantage of the time by listening to a lecture from the Circe Institute. It was a talk given by Dr. James Taylor from their 2003 Conference entitled "Good to Great: Teaching Literature from Grammar to Rhetoric."

Dr. Taylor was discussing the fact that many of today's brightest students come to university literature classes unable to fully delve into the classic Good and Great Books because their experiences are so divorced from the reality of the natural world.  They somehow work out a way to give the right answers, but they lack the depth of true understanding. He gave the example that even in his Children's Literature class, the opening line from the nursery rhyme "Ding, Dong, Dell," had to be explained because the students did not know what a dell was.

Dr. Taylor also mentioned a saying popular among the early church fathers, and I may be paraphrasing here, but it was something along the lines of, "God wrote two books, and you have to understand the first before you can understand the second." The first being the Creation, and the second, the actual written Word.  Dr. Taylor had many other meaty things to say, but this is what I've been thinking about most. I've always believed in the importance of  enjoying the outdoors and learning about the natural world through literature and observation, but I had never made the connection of its significance in deepening my understanding of classic literature and the Scriptures.

Most of the classics were written in a time when people were living a lot of their lives outside; food came from their own land or a farmer they knew personally, and the wonders of creation were a source of delight and entertainment (and sometimes great worry). Vocabulary exercises are not the answer to this problem, as there is a vast difference between Googling what a dell is and standing in one,  giving it its proper name and coming into relationship with it.

 

It is true that a large part of my reality is a world of modern technologies insulated from the elements, literally a constructed reality. True reality is outside those walls. And what do I know of it, what relationship have I with it? It has only been in the last several years that I started gardening and so learned the names of plants other than dandelion, rose, and maple tree. I was so proud when I finally made the effort to learn the names of all the trees in our yard, yet learning their names, while a start, is certainly not anywhere near "knowing" them. I know next to nothing about the stars. So many of the ancient philosophers and mathematicians and scientists made their discoveries by looking up with a sense of awe and wonder. We have given ourselves so much else to look at--to the point that I often check the weather online instead of stepping outside and using my senses. There is head knowledge, and then there is knowledge through relationship.

Why, in the end, is all this important these days anyway? I think nature study and just "living outside" not only train us in careful observation, but give us a sense of place--hard to achieve in a time when identical shopping centers exist in all parts of the country. It helps us to not only know, but care. Most importantly, when we take the time to truly know the things that are made, we come to know more about their Maker.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalm 19:1

Begin As You Mean To Go On

 Some of the best parenting advice I think I have ever received came from a blog whose name is lost to me now. It has stayed with me though, and I have even passed it on to others. It was, "Begin as you mean to go on."

I was happily surprised this week when reading  Chapter 4 of Volume 6  of the Original Homeschooling Series to discover that perhaps the blogger's original source was Charlotte Mason:

                "It is necessary that we should all follow an ordered course, and children, even infant children, must begin in the way in which they will have to go on." Vol. 6, p.70.

 

Principles for habit training, authority and docility, [training] the way of the will, and methods of education can all be derived from this deceptively simple statement.

Sometimes I allow things to begin that as an individual, wife, mother, or home educator I had no intention of ever allowing, much less allowing to go on. Once they have been permitted, however, they incrementally and insidiously take over more and more territory until a bad habit is established that must be overcome... which is ever so much more difficult than not allowing the habit to develop in the first place, though it may not seem so at the moment of its inception. The cultivation of good habits requires watchfulness and diligence, and is hard work itself, particularly when it runs counter to the status quo.

I think the takeaway is that when we are at a 'beginning' we need to have a vision for the end. Not the complete picture, but at least an overarching goal or hope for what lies ahead.  I am guilty too often of not taking a few moments to evaluate whether what I am doing or planning supports what I believe to be good and true. A knee-jerk, "Oh, that sounds like a good activity/curriculum/idea," or a weary, "Okay," often is not such a good idea at all.

Truth, Goodness, and Beauty

I borrowed an idea from Cindy at Ordo Amoris to add to our "morning time" this month. The plan was to at some point during our time, after our Bible study, Scripture memory, and hymns, ask each child to think of something "true, good, or beautiful." Last Tuesday was our first day to try this out, and I really did not know what to expect, but I was anticipating something along the lines of one of their toys, or  something silly to make the others laugh. 

So I read aloud Philippians 4:8 and asked each of them to think of something that they would then share with the rest of us. One of my girls caught her sister's eye and grinned and said she knew what she was going to say. The other one also smiled, and said she bet she was going to say the same thing. My son joined in with the grinning, and at this point, I figured all hope was lost.

Then my daughter said, "Mom. Mom is beautiful." And my other daughter said, "That is what I was going to say!" And then my son said, "Me too!"

And I, humbled and thankful, felt guilty that I had expected so little from them. The Lord blessed this first effort beyond what I had imagined, blessed me to see myself through the loving eyes of my children. And I am so grateful that however many times I have fallen short with them, I have not failed so horribly that they can't still find some beauty in me.

The rest of the week, we did have to talk about whether stuffed animals and iPods qualified for our "true, good, and beautiful" conversations, and honestly I am not sure myself about whether to place judgments on these things or just use them as a springboard into conversation about truth, goodness, and beauty as the children get older, but I will always carry the memory of our first morning time with "truth, goodness, and beauty" close to my heart.