A World Pregnant with Ideas

Oh, dear.  Posting will not be occurring regularly this summer!  If I’m not traveling, I’m busy being at home and outside.  You should stop by, sit a spell,  and see all the flowers in full bloom. I would not be exaggerating to say that Charlotte Mason and her way of living and learning has taught me to see in a whole different way, on a whole different level. I love what William Quayle says about this.
 

I would reverently add to the list of the beatitudes this, “Blessed are those who help us to see.” From my heart I bless such men and women.  All the good must pray to God, “Help us to see.” The pity of this world is not its limitations, but ours. Into the earth as into a king’s golden goblet, God has poured all things which minister to an immortal and growing life. He has made a world pregnant with ideas. Vistas open as through a sunrise world to wide meadow lands beyond, where are sunshine and flowers and birds swaying in the tall grasses and singing as they sway and flute notes of singing waters and odors of damp sod and blooming flowers, and a meadow lark’s dulcet note and swaying shadows of the woods when rocked by south winds and billowy motion of the grass like some emerald sea with tide setting to shore…Life is as a book whose best pages are as yet uncut, and a growing interest holds us, filling the mind as a flood tide the sinuous shore line.
-from In God’s Out-of-Doors

And here are CM’s words about this very thing.

Do you know how Eyes and No-Eyes went out
for a walk? No-Eyes found it dull, and said there was nothing to see;
but Eyes saw a hundred interesting things, and brought home his
handkerchief full of treasures. The people I know are all either ‘Eyes’
or ‘No-Eyes.’ Do you wish to know which class you fall into? Let me ask
you two or three questions. If you can answer them we shall call you,
Eyes. If you cannot, why, learn to answer these and a thousand
questions like them. Describe, from memory, one picture in your
mother’s drawing-room without leaving out a detail. Name a tree (not
shrub) which has green leaf-buds? Do you know any birds with white
feathers in their tails? If you do not know things such as these, set
to work. The world is a great treasure-house full of things to be seen,
and each new thing one sees is a new delight. 
-from Ourselves, Book I, p. 29

“Each new thing one sees is a new delight.” – What new things have you seen recently? 

Here’s what I saw today, tucked in the middle of our Pee-Wee Hydrangea tree!

4 perfect chipping sparrow eggs

In other news…

I am thrilled to share with you Essays on the Life and Work of Charlotte Mason, Volume 2.  So there is my essay on p. 57 – “Citizenship in the Curriculum: Mason, Magnanimity, and the Moral Life.” Riverbend Press has done a stunning job.  They were even able to put in a color reprint of the picture study I refer to in the essay.

Finally, I have been working hard on a new project which I hope to present at the Living Education Retreat in a few weeks.  It is something that has been a desire of my heart for quite some time.I will share about it after the LER. (Speaking of the LER, I truly would appreciate your thoughts and prayers.)

With affection and regard,
Nancy