Costs

She's wondering how friend-love can stretch across distance, how long she can go without connecting. Her tears are real. So is her pain.


What can I do?


We're here because of a calling, a calling we believe is her calling, too. But there are costs involved in answering a calling. When those costs are mine, it's one thing. When the costs are borne by My Girl, it's another.


I turn her to the only true and lasting Comfort that she has. And I leave her with a Book and a pen. And I pray.

Preparing for Christmas without Sensory Cues

Christmas comes where there is no snow. Truly. 


I have to wrap my mind around that and work to begin preparing for Christ's arrival. 


That's what Advent is for, and here I'm finding that observing Advent is ever so much more personally necessary than it was in North America. Somehow the snow, dark evenings, cozy indoor times wearing sweaters, and snow gear all through the front hall became huge cues for me that Christmas was on its way. 


Not so here. There is no snow. The sun is still up at 9pm. Shorts and t-shirts are what we're wearing. And all the windows get opened once the air cools off in the evening (at least the ones with screens). None of those sensory cues are here for me to prepare my heart for Christmas. 


So we've started our annual Advent readings a couple of days late, but with much more longing than usual. Something has to remind us that we're about to celebrate the greatest gift of love!

What's in a Name?

For years I've wanted to be able to name our home. But it just isn't something that's commonly done in Canada. So, even if I did name it, the likelihood of the name ever coming into common use was pretty slim.

Then I moved to Uruguay.

People in Uruguay name their houses! Practically every home you see has the house name posted on the gate or on the lawn. In fact, the houses don't have numbers in most neighbourhoods of our city, just names. So when you get an address it sounds something like:

     Bay Street

     between Brunswick and Douro

     House: Talsma

     City

     Postal Code

(makes me a bit curious about mail delivery, but it seems to work)

The home we have rented already had a name: Yuchan. Yuchan is a variety of tree here that is growing in the front yard. But there was no sign, and we thought this might be my chance to name a house. 

Before long we had chosen a name.

When my Dear Man and our colleague went to work out the final rental agreement with the owner and the lawyer, they asked if we could choose our own name. The owner balked.

"You can't change a house's name! It's bad luck! It would be like changing the name of a ship or boat; it just isn't done!"

We thought that was the end of it, and I resigned myself to living in a place called "Yuchan".

And I tried not to be too disappointed.

Later that same day the two men met again with the owner about something else, and he brought up the naming question. "You go ahead and give it a name if you'd like," he said. "In all the years we've lived there we never even made a sign for it. It will be fine."

So, here we are, in a home we love, quirks and all, AND I was allowed to give it a name!

A couple of days later we realized that we needed to work fast: the telephone company was sending their workers to install our phone line and the address we'd given included the new name.

One of the teen-aged boys on our team got out his sautering iron and burned the name into a leftover piece of lumber that was in their yard. On our next trip to our house we set up the new house sign.

It is my prayer that everyone who enters our door will find refuge: a place of sanctuary and peace, welcome and safety:

Bienvenido a El Refugio

Welcome to The Refuge

50(5x2 + 6) + 5x17 + 5x5 = stress

The morning began the night before.


I stood in the living room, tears in my eyes, and sobbed to my Dear Man "It's not going to work!"


The reply came with a gentle hug. "You go to sleep. And imagine that while you're sleeping the packing elves will be hard at work."


So I did go to sleep, lying beside a tearful daughter, praying silent prayers of peace and comfort for a girl who is aching.


Wakefulness came early, just as sleep came late. The autumn sun wasn't yet risen when I returned to the living room.


Sure enough, the packing elves had been busy through the night. There were more bins sitting ready to go on the airplane with us. Unfortunately, the little piles of personal belongings seemed to be just as plentiful as they were the night before. And so the tears returned.


Another trip to the hardware store to purchase two more bins.


Another period of rearranging the binned items to keep the weights below the magical 50 pounds.


Loved Ones came to give last minute assistance and to give good-bye hugs; their help was like gold.


And by the time our scheduled departure came we were ready with our 10 allotted bags (2 each at 50 pounds) plus 6 extras (50 pounds each) and carry-ons (one carry-on of 17 pounds plus one personal item each - we quickly learned not to call those 'purses' for the sakes of our little boys!).


Let the travelling begin!

Temporary Lodgings

It was late August and we had nowhere to go. All we knew was that we had to be out of our home on the 15th of September and that there was no way we'd actually be leaving Canada until at least the end of that month. We had no place to live once we left Bay Street, and our home in Maldonado wasn't going to be ours until our support was at 100%. 

And it wasn't.

In the last week of August we put a note in our church's bulletin making people aware that we needed a temporary home for our family, that it would be at least for two weeks (probably more, but indefinite), and that we were willing to consider anything from a camper parked in someone's driveway to house-sitting for someone.

By the end of the afternoon we had received three offers of places to live, and a week later we knew where we would be.

Our temporary home has been provided by families from our church who have a large home with 3 apartments. Each apartment is fully equipped for a family, but the three units are joined by an additional kitchen: the Big Kitchen. Our apartment is the upper level of the original farmhouse on this 60 acre property, and, we are overwhelmed with the way God provided for us in this time of transition.

Our front door

We were originally told that our apartment wouldn't have appliances in the kitchen, and we were prepared to go downstairs and do our cooking in the Big Kitchen. But on the day my Dear Man began to move our belongings into the apartment, the owners told him that they had just arranged for a fridge, stove, and dishwasher to be installed before we moved in! 

Once again we were flooded with thankfulness. We had been ready to 'make do' camping in a driveway, and here we were going to be living in an apartment larger than the home we'd moved out of, with space for the kids to play, and fully equipped with all we could want - including living-room furniture brought in from the family room of one of the other homes.  

(And again we cry out a mighty thank you to the fellows who brought all those items up: the furniture from two floors below, and the appliances, including two trips for the fridge!)

The upper floor is ours - the first three windows on the left are the living room,  the next two are from our bedroom, and the last two are My Girl's room. The kitchen, bathrooms, sun room, and two more bedrooms are at the back of the house.

For five weeks now we have lived in this gift of a home. Little Man and Brown Eyed Boy have revelled in the spacious property: woods with a tree-fort, fields to play baseball in, and a ditch explore! 

A glimpse into the forest from the 'baseball field' that's next to the barn where The Ones I Love keep their bikes.

My Girl has also enjoyed the outdoors: soaring in the tire-swing that hangs from a large tree just across the driveway from out door, space in her bedroom (the room she chose because the colours were exactly the same as those in her old room and matched her hand-made quilt) to do her school work in peace, and a place to entertain friends.

It has truly been home, which is so much more than 'temporary lodgings' could ever be.

Last looks over our shoulders at a home that echoes with empty silence:

50 Bay St.

Home for nine years.

The home where we went from being a family of three to a family of five.

The home which saw hours of effort to make it all we wanted it to be.

The home whose colours were chosen with care.

The home that shows the mark of each occupant.

The home that saw love and laughter, tears and pain, joy and sorrow, prayer and rejoicing.

One chapter closes.

Another begins.

Listen Earlier

I ask a question of my Lord and wait for His answer.  

Nothing.  Silence.

But I continue, pressing on with the guidance of others who are more experienced listeners. 

And then the sky opens over me as I realize that while the question is still in my mind and the words are still on my tongue, the answer is being given!

The blessing of His answer is ready for me even before I speak the question!  I don't need to listen more closely.  I don't need to listen longer.

I need to listen earlier.

I have a God who wants to speak to me, is longing to hear my heart, and to pour His words into my heart!

He waits for me to be ready to listen, but He knows the question before it is formed and His answer comes.  His answer comes.

"Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear."  Isaiah 65:24

Digitization of the Charlotte Mason Archives

There has been extensive work done in recent years to digitize the collection of documents related to Charlotte Mason that are currently held at the Armitt in Cumbria, UK.  Dr. Deani Van Pelt and Redeemer University in Ontario have been part of that process, and here you will see a video produced by Deani which explains the significance of the collection and the importance of having a permanent digital record.

If you have read works about CM, some of names of CM scholars may be familiar to you, and in this video you will see some of the faces that belong to those names:

Dr. Jack Beckman

Dr. John Thorley

Dr. Carroll Smith

Dr. Deani Van Pelt

There are, of course, others in the video, and others who are instrumental in bringing Charlotte Mason's work to the forefront of modern education.  We are privileged to have people who are committed to the value of this work, who are making the original documents accessible to all of us, and who are giving so much of their time and energy with little or no compensation.  

Enjoy the video!

This post has been published concurrently on the Whole Hearted Home Educators blog.

Without a Net

This year I'm trying something very new. Well, sort of new and sort of old, but very different. Well, not as different as it might be, but . . .

I've been using Charlotte Mason's principles and methods of education in our home school since before My Girl began officially schooling, and this fall she's entering grade 9. This year, because our lives won't already be interesting enough (ahem), I was inspired to go textbook-less with our Science curriculum and go entirely with living books.

Several years ago I was convinced of the idea of Nature Study being the natural precursor to science in the early years of school, and have done only Nature Study and living science with the boys. But when My Girl entered grade 8 I felt a sudden panic to make sure that she was getting all the foundational science in and turned to a well-known science program. And we didn't like it. It was memorization and dry reading (even when the author was being conversational). And it took at least 45 minutes every single day to complete it! I wasn't sure that I wanted to continue in that framework for the next four years.

One of my friends had participated with her daughter in a pilot project for a CM-style living books science course and loved it. And then in June I went to the ChildLight USA Charlotte Mason Conference in Boiling Springs, North Carolina and heard a wonderful-fantastic presentation about stepping away from the safety net of a textbook based curriculum and using living books and keeping notebooks. There was a lot more to it that the workshop presenter spoke about, and it inspired me to step onto the high-wire of a truly Charlotte Mason science course.

I've spent much time these past weeks selecting and ordering my books (not just for science, and for much more than just the next year, but that's for another post), and now that I'm through that, I'm ready to take that first scary step off the platform and begin travelling along that wire: pre-reading selected books, scheduling readings, planning out the note-booking process. I am so eager to have this work, and I can't wait to begin!

I am incredibly thankful to Jennifer G. for her presentation at CLUSA's CM conference, and hope to be able to share here at PeaceLedge some of the experiences of walking the high-wire of science without a net.

::

Okay, the photos don't have anything at all to do with the post, but I couldn't stand having yet another post without pictures! These three are from our recent trip to Vernon, BC, where we spent a full 24 hours with my sister and her family. Much too short a visit, and much too long since the last one. But, again, that's for another post.

Changing Schedule

My Dear Man has just begun his change to an 80% work week, so he's going to be taking one full day (or 2 half days, I suppose) away from the office and spending it here at home. And while it would be fun to just enjoy his presence, we are going to have to learn to keep on with our things while he works.

His day at home is to consist of phone calls, emails, reading, errands, research, and whatever else is necessary to work on preparing for our departure for Maldonado. This is his new work. It's not a day off, not by any stretch of the imagination. There are so many things to look into before we'll be ready to leave, not the least of which is bringing our financial support up to the required level. His days here are going to be busy.

But we sure enjoyed this week's work at home day, when we got to share lunch with him, My Girl got to go along on an errand or two, and he was available to rehang the light I'd just repaired.

Lots of change ahead. And having my Dear Man around more is one of the good changes!

::

(Dear Man's last day at the office will be August 5. Then things are REALLY going to look different!)

Wanted: Routines

Getting back to routine after six weeks of out-of-the-ordinary is hard, especially when the school year ended during the out-of-the-ordinary time and no summer routine had been established.

So, what with a three hour time change, no routines for 6 weeks, and no school to act as our skeleton for daily scheduling, we've been floundering.

Today I decided that we couldn't go on this way and have been working at putting together a summer schedule. I know it's going to change. I know it isn't going to work every day. But it WILL keep me and The Ones I Love from wanting to fling each other out of windows (mostly).

I'm going to use our food times as anchors: breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks. And then, following each food time we will have a task to do that involves everyone, since everyone is already gathered. It might be a school job (history read aloud or literature). It might be a house chore. We'll see. But after the everyone task is done, then reading time or play time (indoor or out, as the case suits) will be offered until the next together time.

Oh. One more thing. NOBODY will leave the kitchen after food times until all the kitchen clean-up is done. NOBODY!

...

So, do you think it'll work? Time will tell. But at least I have a plan, and that's half the battle as far as I'm concerned.

Trying Something New

I did some fiddling with the appearance of PeaceLedge and, while I'm not completely satisfied with it, I can't go back to the old version. So, bear with me over the next while as there might be several attempts before I find a design and layout that I really like.

Hoping to post more when I have a chance.

The Group of Seven

Have I mentioned before that we have the Best Art Teacher In The World? I have? Well that’s because I believe it’s true. Take a look at this, and see if you agree:

Mrs. Z. introduced the students in our group (aged 5-15) to The Group of Seven, giving a bit of their historical and biographical context. And then, after looking through several collections of paintings by artists from The Group of Seven, each student chose a painting whose style and subject matter they would like to imitate.

They began with pencil contour lines on their canvases, and then used a clear gel medium to give texture to areas of the painting. (The students would be working with acrylics, which dry smooth, and needed to add ‘artificial texture’ to the canvas to reproduce the thick texture and brush strokes of the oil paint used in the originals.)

During the next class, the children worked on the backgrounds of their paintings, mixing colours to match the original. The background paint had to dry before the foreground could be worked on, so that was considered a day’s work.

Next came the painting of the foreground. The colours here were sometimes more vivid, but not always, and the details of the paintings began to appear.

Diligent work (and some not-as-diligent) resulted in paintings to be proud of.

Here are the final results:

Do Not Lose Heart

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. (2 Corinthians 4:1 NIV)

Tumbling Over the Edge

Why is it the little things that push me over the edge?

I’ve been balancing for months, strong winds buffeting from all sides, and now, one little gust, one little atmospheric irregularity, and I’m thrown into the abyss of tears.

Those who know me well might debate my perception that I’ve even been balancing, but it seems so to me: Preparing our home of 9 years for a new owner - balancing. Anticipating an inter-continental move - balancing. Leaving the security of Dear Man’s salaried position for raise-your-own-support full time ministry - balancing. Looking for answers about home education in a new country - balancing. Precarious, wobbly, but still balancing.

Then today a single phone call and over the edge I go. Plummeting into tears of frustration, anger, resentment, loss, and, finally incomprehension of my own response. Why does this feel so big? Why, with everything else that is happening, is this the thing that releases the sobs and tears?

Maybe it doesn’t matter so much why. Maybe it was simply time for the release, and this was a safe place for it.

Law and Love

... this fear of consequences should not be a fear of losing love.  Your child needs to know you are constantly and consistently connected and emotionally there with her, no matter what the infraction.  She only needs to be concerned about the loss of freedom and the possibility of pain.  the message is, "I love you, but you have chosen something difficult for yourself."

...Remember that the law restrains our out-of-control selves enough so that we can slow down and listen to the message of love.

Boundaries with Kids by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Chapter 8: Life Beyond "Because I'm the Mommy" - The Law of Motivation, page 126, 127

How hard it can be sometimes to maintain emotional connection with my children when I'm 'being their boundaries'.  Finding that balance of softness and firmness - like a spine, maybe - is hard.  I lean one way or the other and the balance is lost.


But if I can keep my balance I know my children will be able to see the real consequence as their problem, and not 'mean Mommy'.

::

Isn't this really the same way that God works with me?  The law shows me my sin, and without it I wouldn't know I needed Him.  But it is there to point me to my need for Him, not to focus me on my sin.  To paraphrase Drs. Cloud and Townsend, "...the law restrains my out-of-control self enough so that I can slow down and listen to God's message of love."


Spriritual disciplines function in much the same way.  The disciplines are not faith.  They are not salvation.  But prayer, fasting, worship, simplicity...they slow me down and put me in a position where I am more attuned to hearing the voice of God.

Lazy Parenting is an Oxymoron

Is anger just a cover-up for other, unidentified emotions?  How do I see what's really behind the yell, the whine, the book slammed on the table?


Could it be that  "I hate learning Spanish" really means "I'm used to being able to say whatever I need to, and to being able to answer hard questions and meet new people, and I know I'm not going to be able to do that when we move. I'm afraid of sounding silly (or of being lonely or of embarrassment...).  So Instead I'm going to fight you about learning this new language so I don't have to think about all the changes that are coming."


I have so much to learn.


A while back I read a book by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.  Boundaries with Kids opened my eyes to a lot of things I needed to see about how I guide my children with love and limits.  Recently I picked it up again and now I realize how much I STILL need to learn.  Helping children express themselves in a safe, healthy way that respects those around them is a big job, a job I'm often too lazy to do well.  But it is my job, the one I've been given by God Himself.  And there's no room for laziness in a job that's been assigned by the King of Kings.  


Time to buckle down and align the priorities I set for my time and energy with the priorities He sets for me.  That will involve reading the whole book again, but, more importantly, it will involve lots of prayer and time with my Lord.  He'll guide me.  I know He will.

Dandelion - 100 Species Challenge

7.  Dandelion

     Taraxacum officinale

I wrote about our expedition to discover more about the dandelion in our Outdoor Hour Challenge.  But then I realized that this handy, resilient little plant could serve more than one purpose:  by looking up the official name of this bright fellow, I could bring my 100 Species Challenge list up to the whopping total of 7!

Before doing our study of the dandelion, I already knew about the long, strong taproot which makes the plant virtually ineradicable.  I recognized its leaf shape, knew about the way it chokes neighbouring plants out by shading them, and had watched the flowers go from bud to blossom to seed.

What I didn't know was that the dandelion is actually a composite flower, each head being made up of hundreds of individual florets.  And I knew that the head changed from sunny yellow to white fluff, but didn't realize that the head took several days of opening and closing (morning and night) before it opened fully, and then it would stay closed for a couple of days (I have yet to watch one to see how many) before reopening as the fuzzy white ball that is so much fun to play with.

The plants grow to slightly exceed their neighbouring plants in height.  When on a short grassy lawn they are short themselves, the bloom stalks being only a couple of inches in height.  But when in a grassy field, they grow taller, always outstripping the plants around them.

The leaves on the ones we observed were between 3 and 5 inches in length, slender (only about an inch wide at the widest part), and deeply notched.  They are said to resemble the teeth of a lion (dents de lion), which are quite jagged, apparently.  The flower heads were from 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter when fully open, the buds less than 1/2 of an inch tall and about 1/4 of an inch across.

It was hard for me to follow all the structural information about the dandelion.  Some familiar terms came up (anther-tube, stigma, corolla, etc.), but new terms like involucral bracts, akene, and pappus will take some getting used to.

All the information I gathered about the taraxacus officinale came from Anna Botsford Comstock's fabulous book, Handbook of Nature Study.  I really like the way Comstock talks about the specimens as individuals.  She gives them character and invites us to be friends with them.  What a great way to learn about nature.

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Dandelions

We had to leave our for-sale house for an hour again today so people could go through it, and before we left I let the children choose if they wanted to do an Outdoor Hour Challenge on maple trees or dandelions.  They chose dandelions, so I loaded up my bag with supplies and we headed out.


As we walked to the park, Little Man and Brown-Eyed Boy picked dandelions for me, pulling them from their host plants and proudly carrying them to me.  I gathered them together and laid them beside me on the bench once we arrived at the park.

I let The Ones I Love play while I read the Handbook of Nature Study, pages 531-536, and obtained some background information about dandelions.  (Did you know that their name comes not from their lion's-mane-like blossoms, but from their leaves which look like lion's teeth in profile "dents de lion"? Well, you do now!)

The play was going so well, and I was so intrigued by my study of the dandelions the boys had brought to me, that our hour passed quickly.  

It wasn't until we were home that we continued the dandelion study.  While we ate our snacks, I read a few highlights from the Handbook:

One spring when all the vegetables in my garden were callow weaklings, I found there, in their midst, a dandelion rosette with ten great leaves spreading out and completely shading a circle ten inches in diameter; I said, "Look here, Madam, this is my garden!" and I pulled up the squatter.  But I could not help paying admiring tribute to the taproot, which lacked only an inch of being a foot in length.  It was smooth, whitish, and fleshy, and, when cut, bled a milky juice; it was as strong from the end-pull as a whipcord; it also had a bunch of rather fine rootlets about an inch below the surface of the soil and an occasional rootlet farther down; and then I said, "Madam, I beg your pardon; I think this was your garden and not mine."

HNS p.532

I sent My Girl and Little Man outside to gather some specific specimens. My Girl brought in a dandelion plant, complete with root intact. 

 Little Man was brought five dandelion buds at various stages of development.

We then began our observations.  My Girl and I sketched and described the leaves of a plant, while Little Man dictated his description to me and I wrote it in his nature journal.  Then we investigated the root, noting the things about it that make it such a hardy little plant, so resistant to removal.


I described to the children some of what I'd read earlier about the buds and blossom heads, one particularly interesting point being that a dandelion is a composite flower - each yellow head is actually hundreds of small florets tightly packed together.


Out came the paring knife and cutting board, and the intricate examination of the buds and roots began. 

The children enjoyed looking at the tiny internal parts of the flower heads and buds, and My Girl's nature journal drawings are quite satisfactory. 

I, too, completed my journal entry, and included the exerpt from a poem by Lowell about this "dear common flower" --

'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye

HNS p. 531