January and February were difficult months for us Andrews types. The new year brought with it two car accidents, a health drama, and a broken furnace in the coldest week of the season. I would love to report that we handled it all with faces “set like flint,” hearts full of faith, and unflappable confidence in God’s goodness, but that wouldn’t be honest...
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Much has been made in recent years of the prime opportunity childhood presents to shape lifetime readers. Reading aloud, in particular, is the word on the street where methodology is concerned. With videos and entertainment on the cultural rise, parents no longer have the luxury of throwing a book at a child and hoping it will “take.” Now, they must read it to them, guide them, captivate, and verily, enchant them into the magical kingdom of imaginative literature...
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Two in the morning just might be the loneliest time. The house lies still; only my thoughts run. Lists of what I have done and what I must do alternately congratulate and accuse me, while instant replays of the previous day’s conversations play on my mind’s screen. Soon enough, I flee my bed for the solace of my living room chair. Here I sit in a pool of light with only Marilynne Robinson for company, and one could do worse to chase away night demons...
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“In sorrow, seek happiness.” So says Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky’s literary homage to the problem of pain and suffering. A murder mystery extraordinaire, this novel traces the history of one Ivan Karamazov, eldest brother of the Karamazovs and an intellectual humanist. Frustrated by the problem of evil and its implications regarding the nature of God and His posture toward man, Ivan conceives of atheism as a kind of work around. He reasons that if there is no God, then there is no supreme moral law and no eternity.
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August is upon us, and if you’re anything like me, in addition to the sunshine and heat, it brings with it a crushing realization that the long list of summer to-dos that we penned with great hope in late May is not going to be accomplished. Mine sits before me, a glaring accusation...
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I spent March on the road traveling to homeschool conventions. These are interesting events: educators, professionals, and entrepreneurs of every stripe fill exhibit halls with their wares and spend literal hours on concrete floors explaining their materials. Wide-eyed parents are just trying to figure it all out so that their precious charges can get what they need to survive in the world...
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Recently on our first BiblioFiles podcast, Ian posed the Desert Island Question: If you were confined to a desert island with only three books, which would you choose? He and the rest of the CenterForLit staff laughed when I struggled to name three. I couldn’t decide. I was paralyzed. How could I possibly narrow it down to a mere three titles?
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In award-winning author Wendell Berry’s novel, Jayber Crow, twice-orphaned Jonah searches for answers to the eternal questions: What is the nature of God? What is prayer? Is life a random series of disconnected events, or a linear, purposeful, meaningful path? These universal questions all converge upon Jonah’s more personal questions of identity: Who am I? Am I what I do? Do I, in fact, choose my profession, thus bearing the immense responsibility of making myself? Or am I born to a calling?
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I ordered Go Set a Watchman for myself back in February, as excited by the reported “discovery” of the pre-quel as the rest of the nation seemed to be. To Kill a Mockingbird stands a beacon of American literature and a guardian of the virtuous American Southern identity which it helped to forge...
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It was spring of my oldest son’s eighth grade year, and I, like homeschool moms all over the country, was planning for the fall. Except this time, my son would be starting high school. This time, it would “count.”
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I recently read Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize- winning novel, Gilead. Robinson’s first person narrator, a character by the name of John Ames, relates the story of his family, three generations of pastor-fathers...
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Is it possible that even our deficiencies as a homeschoolers are part of God’s gift to our children? I don’t know about you, but my kids are turning out a lot like me– not that they’re carbon copies, but there are, say, family resemblances. Realistically speaking, my kids are sinners, and no amount of spit and polish, no quantity of education will change that...
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The New Year is a time for reflection and resolutions the world over, and it’s no different for us homeschooling moms. This week, I’m knee deep in the evaluation stage of things...
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